Half-Price Gemini
by DeerstalkerDeathFrisbee
Summary: After his twin's death and a hospital mix-up eccentric artist Castiel is left with his brother Jimmy's identity and responsible for Claire, Jimmy's young daughter. Afraid of losing his niece if social services learns of the name-switch, Cas & Claire move to a tiny town in the middle of nowhere. A town full of Winchesters, nosy ones. Things spiral out of control. Human AU.
1. Chapter 1

**Half-Price Gemini **

**Author's note: Okay, so I never actually meant to write this fic. But then I saw this awesome play 'A Thousand Clowns' and it inspired me. This fic in its final form really bears little to no resemblance to 'A Thousand Clowns' but I just wanted to mention the fact that the play is awesome and apparently inspirational (who knew!). **

**Fair warning, this first chapter/prologue you are about to read is angsty and sad. Please bear with me, the funny will happen, just give it time. Things will get funny in chapter two, the angst in necessary for situation and character development. **

* * *

**Prologue: Claire Novak**

Claire Novak was born one week and four days early. There were three people in the delivery room other than the perquisite doctors and nurses. Her mother: Amelia Novak. Her father: James Novak. And then there was the third person. And in many, many ways, ways both painful and beautiful and everything in between, that third person was the most important of all. His name was Castiel Novak. And he was James' identical twin brother.

But that's not important quite yet.

All that matters right now is that when Claire Novak was born there were three faces looking down into her blue eyes. Three people to remember and know and understand. Three people to love and hate and miss with all her heart and soul.

But that's not quite important yet either.

* * *

From the beginning Claire Novak was the only one who could accurately tell Castiel and James apart every single time. Even Amelia would sometimes make the classic slip-up of asking her husband to do something and then realizing that the only other person in the room was his twin. When Claire was very young she didn't get where the confusion came from. It didn't matter that they had the same face, the same shape, everything that was _Daddy _and everything that was _Castiel _was different. When other family members, other uncles, aunts, even her mother, asked Claire about it all she could say was this:

"Casti is Casti. Daddy is Daddy. Duh."

Even as a toddler who couldn't quite pronounce 'Castiel', Claire had sass. She would need it down the road. But again, that's not quite important yet.

* * *

As a small child Claire saw her uncle Castiel's apartment as a kind of wonderland. It was a magical place full of bright colors and strange things and paint to play with and a typewriter that made a funny ding whenever she finished a line and papers and pencils and art _everywhere. _Mommy and Daddy would sometimes say that Castiel was 'irresponsible' and a 'bad influence' and that his apartment wasn't safe for a child. But Claire treasured the time she could spend with her uncle. She loved how he would sweep her into his arms and carry her around his workroom and tell her all about his paintings and projects and the meaning of life and the stories behind the constellations and the life cycle of bees and all sorts of fascinating things.

When she was three she saw her first beehive. Castiel very carefully pulled out a honeycomb from the hive he kept on his balcony and showed her all the bees busy at work and all of the tiny honey combs they swarmed over in a busy mess of black and yellow and gold. When she told Mommy about it when she got home she thought Amelia might faint. That night she overheard Daddy talking very quietly and intensely with Castiel over the phone, words hissing out like furious steam between his teeth, hot and intense and a bit scalding. She didn't know what the words meant exactly, but she could sense that perhaps she or her uncle had done something wrong.

Claire's afternoons with Castiel grew fewer and farther between and he never showed her the bees again.

* * *

The fire changed everything.

* * *

It had been a quiet evening. Claire, now five years old and very proud of it, ran to answer the door. Her uncle Castiel stood in the doorway, a bag slung over his shoulder, his worn old trench coat hanging around his shoulders like an old friend. When she ran to hug him he smiled at her, but there were lines around his eyes and his hug was looser and tired-er than normal. But little Claire didn't notice.

Daddy walked over and took Castiel's bag, placing a hand on his shoulder and gripping it tight. "You okay, little brother?" he asked.

"Little brother? I think not. And I am quite aquamarine."

Daddy snorted, "You know I don't get it when you talk in your little color-coded riddles."

"I know. Why do you think I say them?"

"You always were a mess."

"Hmm…"

There was a pause.

"Seriously, bro, how're you holding up?"

"Meg is holding my personal possessions hostage. How do you think I am 'holding up'?"

"Ooh, ex is already fighting dirty? I'm sorry, man. Come on; let's get you into the kitchen so Amelia can feed you. You look starved. And leave the trenchcoat, you know Amelia hates it."

Daddy carried the duffle bag off. Only Claire heard Castiel murmur "Thank you, brother," as he ran a weary hand down his face.

Claire, at a loss, hugged him one more time and grabbed his hand and tugged him towards the warm kitchen and comforting family.

It was a quiet evening.

Castiel slept on the couch that night. Peace slowly descended on the Novak house. A sneaking, creeping quiet that should have warned them that something terrible was going to happen that night.

No one knew what started the fire. Claire didn't really recall much from that night. Her memories were jagged and sharp, grating against her mind like a broken bone left unset. Bright flames licking their way through the house with their hot little tongues, smoke swirling around, gagging and choking her. A wet trench coat and strong arms wrapping around her, flying – or maybe running – it was all very jumbled, through the burning house. Voices shouting and screaming. Her knees hitting the pavement, strangers in firefighter coats and doctor uniforms swarming all around her. Footsteps pounding away. Shrugging off the coat and turning in time to see the retreating back of Castiel bolting back into the house.

The burning house.

After that it was just a bunch of shouting.

"Stop that man!"

"What the hell is he doing?!"

"The house is going to collapse!"

"Jimmy! Amelia! James Novak, goddammit! Jimmy, where the fuck are you?"

The last voice seemed to grow louder and louder even though technically Claire shouldn't have been able to really hear it at all. It was Castiel's voice, rising in desperation, breaking and cracking in the smoke and the blaze just like the house Claire had been sleeping in minutes before.

Castiel dragged Amelia out. And he went back in for his twin. The paramedics had to drag both of them out. Claire watched it happen, beyond even crying.

* * *

Only three of the four people in the house that night survived. Claire, who had only minor smoke inhalation and a burn or two. Amelia, who upon regaining consciousness began sobbing incoherently; babble buzzing at her lips like angry bees. Most of her injuries were smoke and psychological. And finally, one of the twins survived. Claire didn't see which one at the hospital. All she knew, in the vague, slightly omniscient way that children have, was that there had been some confusion as to which twin had lived. Apparently the survivor was still unconscious and Amelia was in no fit state to identify him. There was no next of kin available at the time. No one thought to ask Claire, the one person who had always been able to tell.

They ultimately decided the coma patient must be James Novak. The paperwork filled out, the forms all signed. Apparently Castiel Novak was dead. Claire cried. It was a few more days before the comatose man awoke. He was discharged quietly a day or so later, the orderlies and staff solemnly addressing him as 'Mr. Novak' as they wheeled him out to his taxi. Amelia and Claire followed suit the next day.

A few days of hotel rooms later found them suddenly standing in front of the door to Castiel's old apartment. And when the door opened and the burned man greeted them in a smoke-roughened voice, Claire knew that the hospital had made a terrible mistake.

Castiel had lived. Jimmy, _Daddy_ had died. And somehow, someway, the hospital had bungled things. Because this was Castiel standing there, looking down at her with weary blue eyes. It was almost funny. In that moment, in that second everyone there but Castiel himself knew that one clerical error had turned him into his twin.

A few days passed. Things began to reach some sort of 'normal' point. Even if that 'normal' was the fun-house mirror equivalent of such a thing. And then Amelia went out to get groceries for the first time since the fire. She left early in the morning, before Castiel or Claire was awake. That morning Claire woke before Castiel. She wandered into the kitchen and saw a pile of food-filled plastic grocery bags sitting on the countertop, a single sheet of paper fluttering underneath them. Somehow knowing that it was important, much more important than bread or eggs or whatever else was lurking in those plastic bags, she tugged it free. The five year old squinted at the print but couldn't decipher the script. Despairing of understanding the note, she carried it over Castiel's sleeping form. The tiniest of shakes made him leap into wakefulness, the man sitting bolt upright in the middle of the bed, blinking down at his niece.

"This was with the groceries," Claire held out the note.

Castiel plucked it from her fingers and read it in under a minute. Each word seemed to dig a new furrow in his face, dragging it down into lines even heavier and wearier than before. After he finished skimming it, Castiel folded it into tiny sections, creasing sharper and sharper as he went. Finally he couldn't fold anymore. Looking down at the paper as if it had offended him, Castiel huffed, pulled it out of its careful folds, smoothed it flat, glowered at the scrap of notebook paper for a solid five seconds, then tore it into confetti. Tossing the scraps over his shoulder he bounced to his feet and began pacing around the apartment, grabbing luggage and bags and boxes wherever and whenever he could, tossing things into them with a kind of manic hap-hazardness.

When Claire finally managed to get his attention she asked, "What are you doing?"

"The question is: what are _we _doing?"

"Ok, what are _we_ doing?"

"Leaving. We are fucking leaving."

"Language," Claire parroted the words she had heard oft-repeated by her parents. Before the fire, of course. Everything normal happened before the fire.

"We are flipping leaving, then. You and me. We are leaving."

"What about Mommy?"

"She beat us to it."

And that was that. Castiel didn't tell Claire what was in the note until she was much older. It had been simple and to the point.

_Castiel,_

_This is all just too much right now. Take care of Claire, I'm going…somewhere. I'll let you know. _

_-Amelia_

_Don't try to find me. _

And that was how Claire's father died, and her mother left, and her uncle, the third person in the delivery room, become the most important of them all.

* * *

They stopped running somewhere in the Midwest. One day they were in a diner, facing each other across a chipped formica table, eating burgers and fries, drinking shakes and trying to pick a slice of pie for dessert. Castiel stopped, the burger halfway to his mouth when he froze and lowered the food. He slowly rotated his head, taking in the whole of the diner with wide blue eyes. Claire mimicked him, unsure what was going on. Halfway through their second head-rotation, Castiel's eyes met hers across the table.

"This place is perfect."

Claire nodded eagerly, catching some of the energy pouring off of Castiel in waves as he registered the sheer 'perfectness' of the place and the town and the universe all around them. He seemed to absorb it, drawing it into his still body, building off of it, drinking the energy of the slice of world they currently sat in.

"Very green."

And Claire knew he didn't mean eco-friendly. He was using that weird color-code thing that had driven Daddy a little crazy. The one that made perfect sense to little five-year-old Claire. He hadn't used the color-code since the night before the fire.

"A green place," Castiel murmured.

"We could stay, here, in this town," Claire suggested quietly.

Castiel blinked and looked at her in surprise. "Yes," he murmured, "Yes, this might do nicely."

Claire watched his face intently for a minute or so, waiting for a decision to flicker across his expressive eyes.

The minute passed. Castiel blinked and furrowed his brow at her, dropping out of his little mental world and watching her with his head cocked to the side like a bird. "You know we're staying in this town, right? I wouldn't want it to come as a shock." His eyes crinkled on the last few words. He was teasing her, but he was also serious. They were finally staying somewhere. Relief bloomed in her stomach and she almost couldn't finish her lunch, she was so happy. Almost. They did end of eating three slices of celebratory pie between the two of them.

* * *

It was almost as if the town itself wanted the strange man and little girl to stay. The very next day Castiel stumbled upon a man who was trying to sell his used bookstore so he and his wife could finally retire. Castiel made a cash offer in the middle of the gas station convenience store. The man laughed for a good minute before he realized Castiel was serious.

A day later, sitting in on their boxes in the middle of the apartment above their newly purchased used bookstore, Claire decided that they needed ground rules if they were going to stay somewhere permanently. Ground rules were a thing one had when in a house. Mommy and Daddy had always had them. She and Castiel could have some too.

The first one they decided was this: they had to keep pretending that Castiel was Jimmy. Little Claire didn't quite get why but she knew that Castiel said that if the government found out that he wasn't actually Claire's daddy they might try to take her away. And that was too terrible an idea for the five year old to contemplate. So they pretended that he was Jimmy.

Claire countered the first rule with her own offer. If she had to pretend he was Daddy in front of other people then she had to be allowed to call Castiel whatever she wanted when it was just the two of them. To this Castiel responded by looking her straight in the eye and promising this: "No matter what, no matter where you are, no matter what name you use for me, I will always be there when you call me." And that was how Castiel Novak (now known as Jimmy) spent a whole year as 'Steve', a solid two weeks as 'Unicorn' and a month as 'Sparkles'.

There were more rules, little silly things. Most of them were for Claire, ordinary things like bedtime and 'do your homework' and 'try to make your bed semi-regularly'. Some Claire made up for Castiel when she was older and realized that you can put the eccentric artist in the bookshop but you can't take the eccentricity out of the artist. It was mostly to prevent Castiel from being rude to tourists. The locals (for some bizarre reason yet to be understood by man) loved his abrasive and occasionally odd approach to customer service. Then again, a year after their move in-town Gabriel (an obscure Novak cousin the twins had known well as kids but had drifted away from as adults) opened a pastry shop in one storefront down from 'Beehive Books'. And Gabriel was almost as bad as Cas in his own unique way.

And so eight years slid past and one day Claire woke up one day to realize that she was thirteen and her uncle/father figure was loudly heckling someone from the apartment's front window. Great. It appeared they had a new neighbor. Groaning, not sure she wanted to face that insanity just yet, Claire rolled over and covered her ears with a pillow. She would face the music and the new neighbor later.

**Author's Note: Guess who the new neighbor is…? Go on, guess, I know you want to. :) **

**And with that, I leave you chapter one, chapter two, as I said, will be funny. Or at least funnier. **

**Please leave a review! I love feedback and hearing from you guys makes my day a million times better! **

**See ya next chapter! **


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 1: Sam Winchester**

**Author's Note: Because Cas has essentially assumed Jimmy's identity at this point and because everyone he meets other than Claire is under the impression that he is Jimmy he will be referred to as 'Jimmy' when the POV character believes he is Jimmy. When the story is from his or Claire's POV he will be referred to as 'Cas' or 'Castiel'. **

* * *

The storefront between 'Beehive Books' and 'Trick or Treat: an Unusual Bakery' was rumored to be cursed. This had yet to be proven. However, the data did seem to point in that direction. Fact: the empty storefront had never, in the eight years that Castiel and Claire had been living in the tiny town, been occupied for more than six months. Also fact: there were two apartments squashed into the space above the empty storefront and they were _tiny. _This was largely due to the fact that they were never meant to be two separate apartments in the first place, the wall dividing them being a last minute addition to the structure by an eccentric engineer. The unfortunate consequence of this hasty structural decision was that one of the apartments didn't have a shower and both only had half of a kitchen. Meanwhile the apartment above the book shop and the apartment above the bakery were spacious two-bedroom affairs. However, poor apartment planning and what appeared to be a legitimate curse on the middle storefront itself (it was included in the ghost tour and everything. Gabriel made a killing peddling his overpriced pastries to the nighttime tourists) should not have been enough to keep away potential purchasers of the shop and apartments.

No, the neighbors took care of any lingering stragglers.

Castiel (or James as everyone had called him these past eight years), was…_unusual._ Gabriel was an incurable prankster with a wicked sense of humor and a wit not completely appropriate for all ages. And they had a little game they would play every time someone dared to attempt to move into the storefront between them. This was the heckling now-thirteen-year-old Claire had awoken to that lazy July Tuesday.

Let it be known that Gabriel did start it. That morning, fueled by one too many mochas and an excess of hyperactivity, the baker peered out the front window of his apartment (which was perched above his own shop) and spotted the moving truck lumbering down the road. He tracked it with his eyes, watching for a solid three minutes as it creaked to a halt in front of the unoccupied storefront and began disgorging people. People with boxes. _Moving _boxes. A lot of moving boxes.

Oh no, this would not do. Not at all.

Gabriel, figuring the freakishly tall guy unloading boxes in the middle of their parking lot had asked for it and had better be able to suck it up and take it like man, leaned out of the front window of his apartment, took aim and threw a stale bread roll at his cousin's front window, yelling as he did so: "Jimmy, wake up, we have campers!"

A few minutes later a tousled head of dark hair popped out of the other window, peering first at Gabriel and then down at the man standing in their parking lot. He gave Gabriel The Nod. It was time to begin hazing the new additions to their little building.

Gabriel sucked in a huge lungful of air before releasing it all in one loud blast "HELLOOOO CAMPERS!"

The other Novak took up the game within seconds of Gabriel's last syllable dropping on the head of the man in the parking lot. "WELCOME TO CAMP CHIQUITA!"

"And isn't it a fine morning?" Gabriel shouted the not-a-rhetorical-question with a flourish.

"We do hope all you boys and girls have come prepared for your first night at camp!" Jimmy added.

Gabriel took up the banter again, "Sleeping bags, food and machetes will not be provided by The Management! All weaponry is up to you!"

"We do hope you took the time to read your informational pamphlet - No? Well then, boys and girls this first night will be rough, let me assure you." A dark-haired head shook mournfully.

"But not to worry, kiddos!" Gabe hastened to 'reassure' their audience, "We at Camp Chiquita take pride in our stats!"

"We've only lost three campers to zombie attack within the past six months!" Jimmy announced.

"Now that's exciting stuff, boys and girls, ex-cite-ting stuff." Gabriel made sure to stretch out the 'exciting' for extra emphasis, emphasis was very important with this sort of thing.

They could have gone on, and the citizens of their little township most likely assumed the would, if the small crowd gathering around the storefronts was anything to go by, when the man (who was currently trying to carry his boxes into the formerly-empty storefront) dared to be _polite. _He squinted up at the two of them, shaking shaggy bangs out of hazel eyes and called, "Hi there, I'm Dr. Winchester. I guess this is the 'welcome to the neighborhood' committee?" He didn't even sound offended. Gabriel was hurt. Obviously the Novak professional pride was at stake here. Not even bothering to check with Jimmy, Gabriel decided to step up the antics a notch.

"Ooh! A _doctor!" _Gabriel chirped, fanning himself dramatically, tossing a wink at his cousin before he continued speaking, this time in an outrageously fake southern drawl, "Oh, happy day, Mama! A gentleman caller and he's a _doctor! _Hurray!"

Jimmy laughed, "How chartreuse of you, kind sir!" he declared, tipping an invisible hat at the man standing in the parking lot before ducking back into his own apartment.

Gabriel took that as his cue to give a final over-done fake-swoon, trilling "A _doctor!" _before slipping back into his apartment. Not too bad a turn-out for a fresh-meat heckling. And the response from their victims, while unexpected, was just hilarious. Too perfect. Gabe had the feeling that this would be a fun day.

* * *

Claire was standing in the living room, waiting for Castiel to pop back into the room after his final salutation to the new neighbor. Apparently he was 'chartreuse'. At least that was better than the last neighbors. Those were apparently 'puce'. And puce neighbors never lasted long.

When Castiel slid back through the window he nearly head-butted his waiting neice. He blinked, suprised. "Too much?" he asked; blue eyes huge and innocent as he referenced the heckling he had just rained down on the newest addition to the building.

Claire tried to angry with him. She tried to dredge up some irritation at the very least. But no such luck. A smile was trying to sneak its way across her face and…wait…there it was, twitching across her lips, spasming through her eyebrows until she was helplessly snickering along with her uncle.

"No," Claire hissed as she tried to catch her breath, "No, that was _hilarious._"

"It was, wasn't it?"

Claire snorted, and shook her head. "You and Gabe…"

"Are incorrigible," they finished the statement together.

Castiel raised his eyebrows, "Variety in vocabulary, Claire," he reminded her; tapping her nose with one long, slim finger, "We wouldn't want you getting predictable."

Claire snorted again and turned away, towards the kitchen, "Do you want some breakfast?" she asked, assuming she would have to make something for the both of them. Castiel was not the type to remember feeding himself when left to his own devices.

Castiel was already gone when she turned around.

"Incorrigible," she muttered again, realizing that he had left a plate of toast and bacon and a glass of orange juice sitting on the counter, waiting for her. Shaking her head at her strange father-figure, Claire took a big bite out of the toast and wondered what the day would bring.

* * *

"_chartreuse?" _Dean's voice crackled on the other end of the line, rising in incredulity with every syllable, _"What the hell is that supposed to mean?" _

Sam shrugged, juggling the phone on his shoulder as he unpacked, "I have no idea, dude. All he said was that I was being 'chartreuse'. Isn't that a color or something?"

_"Dude, do I look like I know?" _

"Umm, Dean, you do realize we're using a phone. I can't actually see you."

_"Figure of speech, Sammy." _

"Uh-huh. I think the stress is getting to you."

_"I'm fine, Sammy, how many times to I have to tell you?" _

Sam snorted doubtfully, but kept his mouth shut. He didn't want to fight with Dean over this. Dean was a SWAT cop back in New York and a damn good police detective, too. But lately he'd seemed even more frayed at the edges than normal. Sam hoped some time back here, in the town they'd grown up in, might get him back on the right side of normal again. So, instead of pressing the issue, Sam changed the subject, "So are you still coming down to help me get everything moved in?"

_"Sammy, don't ask stupid questions. Do you seriously think I'd miss my baby brother starting his own practice in the town we grew up in?" _

"Dean, you almost forgot to go to your own senior prom, you're not really one for 'big events'."

_"Shut up, that was stupid-ass Prom. When have I ever missed anything important in your life?" _

Sam huffed out a sigh and smiled, "Never."

_"Damn right, bitch." _

"Yeah, yeah, jerk."

There was a moment of peaceful, brotherly contentment.

"So I'll see you Friday?" Sam asked.

_"Yep, I've just got to close this last case and I'll be there." _

"Don't do anything stupid."

_"Yeah, yeah," _Dean mimicked Sam's earlier statement.

"Bye, Dean."

_"See ya, man." _

Sam hung up the phone and tossed it aside, making sure it landed safely in a box of t-shirts. Right now he was focused on making the tiny apartment (he had taken the one with a shower) livable. And avoiding his neighbors. He did _not _remember seeing those guys the last time he was home. The last time he'd been in Orcastle (a pretentious name for what amounted to a very small town) the bookstore was owned by a sweet elderly couple and the bakery was a coffee shop that served coffee so terrible it became a local sport seeing how many cups one person could down in one sitting without gagging or vomiting.

Sam rocked back on his heels and wondered at how much could change in ten years. It almost made him sad, the thought of Orcastle growing and changing without him and his brother around to mark the alterations, as tiny and seemingly insignificant as they were. Sam shook his head, dislodging the nostalgic thoughts and returned to unpacking with a renewed passion. He needed to be able to live in this place after all, and having nothing but cardboard boxes and a phone accessible would not get him very far.

* * *

"I nominate Claire as tribute!" Gabriel proclaimed, as he sauntered into Beehive Books at around half-past-ten.

It was a statement of how desensitized the town had become to Novak antics that not a single customer bothered to glance up at this strange proclamation.

Claire glanced up from her copy of 'Catching Fire', "Very funny, Uncle Gabe,"

"Appreciation for my fine sense of humor will not get you out of your nomination, missy," Gabriel hopped up on the checkout counter and grabbed three of the free lollipops, unwrapping all of them with a single flourish, popping all three into his mouth at once.

"No sacrificing my offspring to pagan gods without my written consent, Gabriel," Castiel admonished him.

Claire snorted at her uncle, still absentmindedly wondering how Gabe had managed to un-wrap all those lollipops at once.

"No, no, nothing like that, Jimbo!" Gabe hastened to reassure him.

"No sacrificing her to non-pagan gods either," Castiel clarified.

Gabe rolled his eyes childishly, "You are no fun at all, are you Jim?"

"You're annoyingly yellow today, Gabe."

"And you're annoyingly blue!"

"Hmm, and I had thought I was safely violet. I'll have to check this."

"What? No, oh whatever! You're missing the point. I'm volunteering Princess Clarabelle to do a little spying for us!" Gabe re-directed the conversation, grabbing Claire's hand and pulling her into a twirl in front of the checkout counter.

"The chartreuse neighbor?" Castiel asked with a single raised eyebrow.

"The very same!" Gabe chirped.

Claire pulled out of the impromptu twirl, laughing. She loved when they were like this, relaxed and ridiculous and homey. "I was planning on talking to him anyway."

"Atta girl," Gabe grinned and Claire couldn't help but grin back.

Claire shot a look at Castiel over her shoulder, "Hey, do you need my help with the store today?"

Castiel shook his head, "I hardly think I'm going to be overrun by the unwashed masses. Or even the washed ones. Methinks the masses in general are quite well-behaved today."

"Ok, then I'm going to go spy on the new neighbor."

"Bring me back a potted plant. I won't accept t-shirts as souvenirs," Castiel's blue eyes twinkled with mischief.

"I'll see what I can do," Claire laughed.

* * *

To say Sam was surprised when he opened the door and saw a preteen girl on the front step would be an understatement. "Can I help you…?" he asked uncertainly, not sure where this unexpected child had come from.

"I'm Claire, I live next door," she smiled charmingly. Sam resisted the urge to be charmed.

"Okay…" Apparently his face betrayed the way his mind automatically wandered back to that morning and the strange men who had greeted him.

"I promise I'm relatively normal," she assured him.

"Uh, no, I'm not concerned about that, I mean, I'm not judging, I mean -."

Unexpectedly, Claire laughed, "Good, I was worried you were some sort of nutjob."

"Ok, you lost me there."

She shrugged, "Well, you took the welcoming committee really well. Like, you might secretly be a little crazy, well. You're either nuts or really open-minded. I'm thinking open-minded cuz of how awkward you are right now."

Sam surprised himself by smiling, "So you don't think I'm nuts, do you?" he asked with arch playfulness.

"Hmm, maybe a little bit PB and J, but not full-on Nutter Butter yet."

"I'm sorry, what?"

Claire grinned, "How nuts you are. You've got just enough crazy to be a PB and J sandwich, but not enough for a Nutter Butter cookie."

Sam said the first thing that came to mind, "I'm not sure if I'm offended or not."

Claire had, with the single-mindedness of children, skipped ahead to a new subject. "Do you need help unpacking?"

"Sure?" Sam was momentarily perplexed. How many random middle school neighbor kids volunteered to help unpack your crap for you?

"Ok, I'll warn you though, I charge five bucks an hour."

_Ok, make that a random capitalist middle school neighbor kid. _

* * *

"He seems nice," Claire declared a few hours later, sitting in 'Trick or Treat', scarfing down a BLT with Castiel delicately picking apart a peanut butter and banana sandwich on her left and Gabriel cleaning up from the lunch rush behind the counter in front of her.

"Nice? Really?" Uncle Gabe sounded disappointed.

Claire nodded, rubbing it in a little, "Yep, nice. He's a doctor, going into private practice in that middle storefront. His brother's driving down in a few days to help him unpack all the equipment."

_"Nice?!" _Gabriel still sounded affronted at the very thought.

"Yes, Gabriel, _nice_." Apparently Castiel had decided to join Claire in a little friendly Gabe-ribbing.

"But the nice ones are so _boring!" _Gabe whined, throwing his torso onto the countertop in explosive mock despair. Claire shifted her sandwich out of the line of fire. Castiel began to delicately drop slices of peanut-buttery banana in his cousin's hair.

"Excuse me?" an unfamiliar voice interrupted the family-bonding (or whatever the hell was going on, Claire was still a bit unclear as to what was really happening at that point). Three sets of Novak eyes rotated around to stare at the unusually tall man standing awkwardly in front of the counter.

"Everyone, Doctor Sam Winchester. Doctor Sam Winchester, everyone," Claire introduced.

"Helloo nurse!" with an zippy cartoon reference, Gabe was popping upright and bouncing towards the other end of the counter, the end currently occupied by their new neighbor.

"_Doctor_, Uncle Gabe, he's a doctor," Claire reminded him.

"A good reference is a good reference," Gabe sniffed, "Jim, teach your kid about quality tv," he shot at Castiel.

Castiel did not bother to respond to the comment and instead contented himself by watching the slices of banana he had carefully placed in his cousin's hair and making quiet bets with Claire on how long certain pieces would stay lodged in Gabriel's golden-brown locks.

"So, welcome to Trick or Treat bakery!" Gabriel grinned mischievously, "Would you like a trick or a treat today, sir?"

"I'd actually prefer a salad."

"The chartreuse ones always do," Castiel muttered.

Dr. Sam Winchester blinked and refocused, furrowing his brow as he stared at Gabriel, "Wait, you're the guys from the window earlier."

"Welcome to the neighborhood! I'm Loki, god of mischief!" Gabe declared.

"_Gabe,_" Castiel warned in his 'parent-voice', "What are we _not _at work?"

Gabriel pouted, "A-pagan-god" he muttered all at once.

"Very good," Castiel said serenely.

"I'd still like a salad," Sam tried to redirect the conversation.

Castiel shook his head, muttering about the chartreuse-ness of it all.

Sam realized, with the kind of resignation that only washes over you every now and then, mostly in dire situations in which there is no escape, that he would not be getting a salad for a good long time and perhaps he had gotten in a bit too deep with these people. Apparently they were all a tiny bit deranged.

**Author's Note: Wow, I updated that fast… Try not to get used to that, with me there's typically a pretty significant gap between updates, but I'm really, really into this story right now and can't seem to stop writing it or planning it. :) **

**Anywho, wasn't this chapter funnier than the last one? Heehee, tis but the calm before the storm… Yes, there will be more drama in later chapters, but right now our little Novak family is all content and sweet. And next chapter there shall be DEAN! Am I the only one excited about this…? I hope not, I have big plans for Dean, his stay in Orcastle (yes, I finally bothered to name this fictional town) will be much longer than he planned…**

**Anywho, please REVIEW! I love hearing from you all! **

**See ya next chapter! **


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter 2: Dean Winchester**

The bell above the shop door dinged. Castiel glowered at it like it had personally affronted him by existing. The bell ignored his displeasure (it always did, the little blighter) and kept on ringing, echoes fading on and on to infinity, taunting Castiel with the sure knowledge that that damn pendulum would continue to oscillate forever and ever on an atomic level and that he would never be able to stop it without literally freezing the universe. Seeing as freezing the universe required a ridiculous amount of effort and would most likely result in mass destruction, Castiel was left with the irritating, oscillating bell and an overabundance of knowledge when it came to physics.

Despite the bell and its many distracting qualities, the person entering the shop who had triggered the mental chain reaction that was Castiel's typical response to That Damn Bell was a stranger and therefore not someone Castiel was particularly worried about making a good impression upon. He was far too busy devouring the last few chapters of the paperback he may or may not have snagged from the merchandise that morning.

Time trickled past. Five minutes, ten, then fifteen. Claire returned from helping Dr. Sam Winchester unpack (Castiel did not believe in calling people he did not know by anything less than their complete first names. It was off-putting enough that it typically guaranteed Castiel only ever knew people who, at the very least, were interesting). He could distantly hear the clatter and thud of her sorting through the boxes of un-shelved books in the back room. He vaguely hoped she didn't disrupt his filing system too much.

Foggily his ears picked up on the sound of her shouting to the lone customer (the bell-triggering stranger from before), "Have you found a copy yet?"

The man's response was short and to the point, "Nope, Sammy's gonna be pissed if we can't replace that book."

"Well, the Beehive's got a ton of really old first editions, I'm sure we'll find something."

A wordless grunt of acknowledgement from the stranger and they went back to silently searching. Castiel didn't mind silent searching. It was pleasant white noise, soothing against his fried nerves and jangling, chaotic thoughts. Talking, now talking was just distracting. Especially as the epic battle in chapter forty-two drew to a close and he still didn't know if the hero would survive.

Time resumed its slow, steady rhythm as it rolled past. More thumping and thudding as the two searchers combed through the store, on the hunt for some sort of obscure text. Castiel honestly couldn't care. Claire would come to him if she really needed help. He immersed himself in the book in his hands so thoroughly that when the stranger gave a shout of victory, holding a thick text aloft, Castiel didn't so much as shift position.

In summary, Castiel Novak was completely unprepared for the stranger who slapped said thick book down on the counter the bookstore owner was currently sitting behind (Apparently Castiel looked like he _worked _in the shop, a grave mistake he would be sure to correct later). "I'd like to buy this book," the stranger declared, voice still warm and flushed with the victory of _finally _finding whatever book he and Claire had been searching for.

Castiel was in the midst of the final seconds of the final pages of the final book in a series. He honestly didn't care what this man wanted to buy. "Please wait," he told him robotically.

A minute slid past, three pages gliding with it.

The stranger was getting restless, Castiel could sense the energy of it twitching along the edges of his perception. "I'd like to buy this book," the stranger said, this time voice sharper, harder and more forceful.

Castiel was getting irritated. It was raining, his scars were aching, it was a slow day, he hadn't wanted to open the store at all, and here this guy was, ruining his book. "People have been waiting for things for hundreds of years. I'm sure your genetics allow you to survive a few more minutes."

"Listen, you-."

Castiel hissed out an annoyed breath between his teeth, "I am pages away from finding out if the hero lives or dies and you are spoiling it. Kindly shut up now."

Claire stuck her head out of the back room, "I can ring you up," she offered.

The stranger, relaxing now that the problem did not look likely to devolve into fisticuffs, said "Thank you."

The inclusion of yet another person to this dialogue was too much for Castiel. He set the book down with a resigned sigh, "And now you're all spoiling it. Fine, fine! Buy your damned book." He grabbed the stranger's purchase and began scanning it, right hand shaking slightly and fumbling the heavy tome. He tried to cover it up, and thought he might have hidden it from the green eyed stranger staring down at him, but he could never hide anything from Claire.

He didn't meet her eyes, but he knew the look on her face. It was just like the look on Jimmy's face when he saw his twin bruised and bloody from another round of pointless bullying from their older brothers and a large chunk of the older cousins. Castiel had always hated pity.

"I can do-" Claire began, watching him give up on using his right hand completely.

"No, no, the book's ending's ruined now," Castiel turned the conversation flippant. It was true, an interrupted ending was a ruined ending. He wouldn't be able to read it now. Scooping up the paperback he had been poring over, he tossed it to Claire. "Tell me how it ends."

Claire sighed irritably, just barely catching the flying book. Without even opening it, she answered "The village is saved, the hero gets the girl and they all live happily ever after."

Castiel snorted, "The girl died four chapters ago, try again."

Claire rolled her eyes, "Everyone dies."

Castiel shot her a look of reproof. "Claire, open the book."

Claire flipped to the last page and actually skimmed it silently while Castiel finished the sale. Finally she looked up and told him, "The hero ends up living a quiet, obscure, but ultimately happy life. The end."

"Happy endings, typical," Castiel grumped mildly, weighing the heavy book he had just sold in his left hand, contemplating the nature of happy endings, and nieces that had dead brothers' eyes and right hands that were too nerve-damaged to function properly consistently. And scars. Maybe he was just in a morbid mood today.

A throat was cleared. Castiel blinked, realizing he had been mindlessly staring without really seeing. His wandering eyes landed on the stranger standing in front of him. The first thing he thought was _amber. _Amber, tinted with traces of grass green and dark patches of smoky green. This was an amber person. An amber person with green eyes and a leather jacket and an attitude that screamed 'I am seconds away from crushing you like a tin can because you've managed to be really, really, really irritating throughout this whole book-shopping experience'. It was kind of sweet, like a growling puppy. Because Cas knew, that despite the fact that this man was acting very puce right now he was not puce _person. _That was nice. It was always comforting to meet people who were not puce by nature. There was no helping puce people.

"I'd like my book back now," the stranger growled. Castiel got the distinct feeling that this was probably not the first time these words were uttered in the past few minutes.

Not feeling particularly helpful, Castiel narrowed his eyes at him, "Stop being puce and I might consider it."

"What the f-," the stranger bit off the syllables before they could mature into a word most certainly not appropriate for Claire's youthful ears. He ground his teeth; actually _ground his teeth,_ a habit Castiel had been convinced was something relegated to flowery turns of phrase and not real people. "What are you talking about?" the stranger finally settled on saying.

Castiel sighed, "You're still doing it."

"What?!"

A mournful headshake. "Being puce. It's on the verge of becoming an irreversible condition with you, isn't it? Sad, really. Amber people are so rare; it's unfortunate that you're squandering it on puce-ness." Perhaps Castiel, if he were in the mood for being honest with himself (he wasn't), would have admitted that he was just messing with the other man. But, as previously stated, Castiel really wasn't in the mood for self-assessment and personal honesty. No, he was feeling particularly mercurial today and this stranger had chosen to irritate him.

"Listen, buddy, I am _this close _to strangling you-."

Of course this is when Gabriel chose to saunter in. Because that was just how Castiel's day seemed to be going.

"Oh! Strangling! Sounds kinky!" Gabe chirped, munching on a Twizzler.

"Uncle Gabe!" Claire squeaked, sounding more than a little grossed-out.

"What?" Gabriel shrugged, "I just went with where the conversation was clearly taking me."

"Stop trying to corrupt Claire," Castiel turned away from the stranger, eyeing Gabe irritably, "She's a nice girl."

"I'm not _corrupting _her," Gabriel hedged.

This was around the time that the stranger made a grab for the book he had purchased. Castiel easily kept it out of his reach, swatting the fingers away with his right hand. He gave the other man a chastising look out of the corner of his eye, "That was just childish. I expect more from you."

Green eyes glared back into blue. Castiel snorted softly and turned back to Gabriel, still holding the book aloft, out of the reach of irate customers. Hm, perhaps that was a bad choice in hindsight. It was heavy and he could feel it pulling at the tight swaths of burn scarring across his back and shoulders. He _knew _Claire was looking at him with concern in her eyes. He could _feel _it.

"Are you done being puce?" he asked the customer, "This book is heavy."

The customer looked torn between homicidal rage and helpless laughter. The combination of emotional forces was staining his face, ironically enough, puce. Castiel might have laughed if this were a different day and he was feeling less cantankerous.

"Ooh, a puce one," Gabe finished his lollipop and twirled the stick across his knuckles, "A shame, that. The puce ones are the worst."

Castiel gave his cousin a narrowed-eyed stare, not sure if Gabe was mocking him or not.

"This is ridiculous," moaned Claire with the eloquence of every exasperated tween.

"Perfect!" Gabe chirped, "It's a slow day at the bakery, I was hoping you folks had a nice batch of ridiculous waiting for me."

"Shouldn't you be _working_?" Castiel asked, eyes narrowed.

"Pssh, that's what the hired help's for."

"The last time Kevin tried to operate the ovens, he set the instruction manual on fire," Castiel mused.

Gabriel visibly paled, "I'd forgotten about that."

"Go make sure your teenage lackey hasn't caused any property damage," Castiel instructed.

"But I had a _reason _for slogging through all that rain!" Gabriel protested, "And it wasn't just to watch you play keep-away with a handsome stranger.

"I think I just vomited in my mouth a little," Claire moaned.

Castiel, who had, throughout the last few minutes of conversation, been shifting the book around, ducking and swerving to avoid letting the customer grab his purchase. He stopped, glared at the stranger as if it were his fault for forcing him to act so childish and set the purchased book down on the countertop, hands folded neatly atop the tooled leather cover.

"Aaanywaaaay," Gabriel dragged the word out as long as possible, pointing his lollipop stick at the stranger as he addressed him; "Your Sasquatch brother's looking for you and the munchkin. Apparently he sent you on a short errand to replace a book that got trashed in the move and you've been gone for over an hour."

"Yeah, well there were…unavoidable inconveniences," he grouched, glowering at Castiel.

Gabe snorted, "That line doesn't work on me, buddy, everyone local knows not to try and check out when Jim's finishing a _Chronicles of Moondor _book. You just have poor planning skills."

For some reason the mention of Castiel's guilty-pleasure reading choice made the stranger perk up a bit, "_Moondor, _really?"

"Uh, yeah, my cousin's a total geek."

"Gabriel," Castiel's tone should have been enough to warn his cousin off of this topic.

"What could you possibly do to me, baby cousin?" Gabe teased.

"Call your mother," Castiel said serenely.

Gabriel visibly paled for the second time in that conversation. "I surrender," he squeaked out, "I'd better run, actually, and you know, make sure Kevin hasn't set anything on fire yet…yeah…I'm out! Peace! Make love and not phone calls, Jim!"

Castiel permitted the tiniest smug smile.

"So, why are you so interested in _Moondor_?" Claire asked the stranger politely, sidling up to Castiel and freeing the purchased book from his hands and passing it off to the customer. Castiel permitted it. The other man was acting less puce now.

"I, uh, well, kinda know the author," the man said uneasily.

"Sweet!" Claire chirped, "I love those books too! Can you get something signed for me?! I'd pay for it and everything!"

"Sure, why not?" he sounded awkward now. A bit lime-green in attitude. Much preferable to the puce. Castiel marginally approved.

"Awesome!" Claire crowed, elbowing Castiel, "Hey you, I know what I want for my birthday now!"

"Of course you do," Castiel grumbled fondly.

The stranger chuckled, "Well, I'd better get back to helping Sammy get unpacked. The little nerd's probably gotten distracted again. Are you coming, Claire?"

"Sure!" Claire was still grinning at the prospect of _signed _books, she bounced to her feet, "Can I go help Dr. Winchester?" she asked Castiel.

"Try not to get eaten by a rabid dust-bunny, I hear they're running wild this time of year," Castiel warned lightly.

"I'll keep it in mind," Claire grinned, "Oh, by the way, this is Dean Winchester. Dean Winchester, this is my…dad. Dad, meet Dean Winchester."

Even now it was hard for Castiel not to look around for Jimmy when Claire said 'dad'. But he resisted the urge to seek out his absent twin and instead accepted the hand offered for shaking. "Hello, Dean Winchester. It's good to see you being less puce."

"Uh, yeah, hi…?"

"James," Castiel's stomach twisted with time-dulled self-loathing at the sound of his stolen name, "James Novak."

"Nice to meet you, Jimmy."

"Jim, Jamie or James. My name is not Jimmy," Castiel informed him, mind continuing the thought: _'Jimmy is my dead twin brother. Not me.' _

"Oh, okay, dude, whatever floats your boat." Castiel could almost see the unspoken thought trailing after that comment: _and your boat is pretty freaking weird, man. _But that was ok, Castiel didn't mind that other people found him strange or off-putting. That was fine. He almost enjoyed it. Almost.

"Goodbye, Dean Winchester," he dismissed the amber man and his green eyes. He was tired of having people watch him and judge him right now. At this moment all Castiel really wanted was some peace. And this man seemed like the sort that turned things on their heads just to see how they'd look that way.

"Uh, bye Jim. See ya around."

And with one more irritating, oscillating, jangle of the door's bell, out walked Dean Winchester, followed by Claire. And Castiel was left alone in the quiet bookshop. Damn. He was missing the noise already. Castiel folded his arms and dropped his chin on them. Clearly this was shaping up to be a restless sort of day. He drummed his fingers on the countertop. Tap, tap, tap-tap-rap-a-tap-tap. Ugh. The silence was stifling. He needed to get out. Where to go?

Dr. Sam Winchester needed help moving in. Dean and Claire were helping him. Gabriel must be involved somehow; he was running messages for the man, after all. It would seem the whole building was in on Operation Sam Winchester. Fine, being non-conformist was starting to feel stifling anyway. Castiel shoved himself away from the countertop with a huff of irritation at how contradictory his thoughts were being today and grabbed his trenchcoat. He might as well help with this whole moving in thing. There weren't any customers today anyway.

* * *

"Sounds like the guy who called me chartreuse the day I showed up," said Sam, "He's _interesting." _

"And kinda weird," Dean pointed out.

"Yeah, that too."

There came a knock on the door. The brothers traded a surprised glance, Dean hopping up to get it.

"I heard that helping your brother move in was what all the social outcasts were doing these days. So I decided that being a cool kid was too much work." The dark-haired bookstore owner brushed past Dean and into the half-put-together living room.

"So you're here to help?" Sam asked.

"It all depends on perspective," the man gave a strange lopsided smile.

Dean sighed. This town had gotten really weird while they were gone.

**Author's Note: I'm sorry that this chapter is so unpolished and messy…I tried, I really did, but this one just wouldn't come out right. I hope the final product is good. :)**

**So, here's Dean! And some more info on Cas' injuries from the fire. Sorry for the lack of Sam in this chapter, he'll be more prominent next chapter! And…I don't have much more to add. **

**Remember, please, please PLEASE review! Thanks a bunch! **

**See ya next chapter! **


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter 3: Staying Gold **

**Author's Note: I would recommend listening to the band 'Of Monsters and Men's first album while reading this. I had it on while I wrote this chapter and it so perfectly captured the mood that I just had to write this note recommending it. Seriously, look up this band, they are amazing. **

A week later Dean was scheduled to leave Orcastle.

Castiel awoke at two o'clock that morning, a feeling of nameless dread pooling in his stomach. He lay in bed, staring at the ceiling, driving away the memories clawing at his restless mind. Phantom flames and ghostly smoke tugged at his senses, trying to stain the insides of his eyelids red and black.

Sam awoke at three o'clock that morning, eyelids clicking open uncertainly, as if the sudden need for wakefulness has surprised not only Sam, but his body as well. A sense of foreboding tugged at his limbs and threatened to drag his body down. He closed his eyes and rolled over, dragging a pillow over his eyes, praying for sleep to return and dispel this odd, nagging feeling that something was coming. Something bad.

Claire awoke at four o'clock that morning, hot and itchy, frustrated and sleepless. She jumped out of bed, pacing her room for five minutes, debating the likelihood of Castiel already being awake. Even more irritated, she tossed herself back onto her bed, smacking her face into her pillow as if the mere force of her landing would be enough to punch sleep back into her body.

Gabe did not wake up at an odd time that night. But he did crawl out of bed at the exact moment his alarm clock rang, for once indefinably grateful for the intrusive thing disturbing his sleep.

Dean awoke at five o'clock that morning, filled with a vague sort of energy, a need to get moving and do _something. _Grabbing a mug of coffee and stuffing a piece of dry toast in his mouth, Dean crept through the apartment, trying not to wake up Sammy. He scanned the living room, hoping for a book to hold his interest for a few hours until his brother got up. He picked up a paperback, thumbed through it, tossed it aside. A few magazines followed suit. Nothing fit. Everything felt ever so slightly out of place and somehow wrong.

_Wait, there's bookstore downstairs…_Dean's mind leapt, unbidden to 'Beehive Books' downstairs and all the thousands of titles cluttering its shelves. The top floor apartments were all connected by one long hallway. The staircase's landing connected to all of the shops. It wasn't stealing if Dean didn't take any of the books _outside _of the bookstore, right? He could just sit in there and read for a bit. That way he wouldn't wake up Sammy. It was the perfect plan.

And this is a prime example of why plans should not be made by sleep-deprived men at ungodly hours of the morning.

Dean slunk down the stairs, easing the bookshop's back door open and slipping through. Success! Alright, now all he had to do was find the right section… Using the light attached to his iphone, Dean crept through the stacks, checking genre headings and trying not to trip over the crates of books left lying around haphazardly. He was starting to think that they were some sort of Do-It-Yourself alarm system when…

"You're not very good at breaking and entering." The low, raspy voice cracked through the silence which had hung, heavy and gray, all around Dean up until that moment. Startled, he jumped, tangling his feet in the box directly in front of him and went down with a clatter.

"I retract my assessment. You are terrible at breaking and entering."

"What the-." Dean began.

"Although I suppose there wasn't really any actual 'breaking' involved, was there?" the voice mused, "Unless you've broken yourself falling all over my books. Have you? That would be very byzantium of you. And you're just the sort to go around doing byzantium things just for the fun of it."

"Dude," Dean groaned, dragging himself back upright, using a bookshelf for support, "What the _hell _is a _Byzantium_?"

"It's a color, deep purple to you. Don't be a troglodyte."

"What-"

"You are a troglodyte. If you have to ask for a definition, no other definition is necessary."

"Are you always this bitchy at five am?" Dean grumped at the as-yet-unseen other person.

"No."

"Prove it."

There was a pause. Dean could hear the rustle of a page turning.

"No."

"Well how _Byzantium _of you," Dean half-snarled, realizing his foot was stuck in the book crate and trying desperately to free it. After almost a minute of rattling the damn thing around, Dean finally gave up, slamming his foot into the ground in the vague hope of dislodging the crate in the process. No such luck.

"Stop that," huffed the voice, Dean was fairly sure it was James (not Jimmy, apparently that particular nickname was taboo. Honestly, this guy was nuts). Dean could hear the sound of a book being set on a countertop or table and the scrap-thud of a chair being pushed away. This was followed up by the steady creak-thump of feet across the floorboards and the sudden appearance of a shadowy figure bearing an eye-searingly bright flashlight right in front of Dean.

"Holy-?! What the hell, man? Are you trying to blind me?" Dean demanded gruffly.

"Stop being powder blue," James chastised him, "I'm here to help you. Hold still."

In less than five seconds Dean's foot was freed and James was striding off, calling, "Follow if you want coffee," over his shoulder.

Dean wanted coffee. He followed the strange man.

Five minutes later they sat on the floor behind the counter, clutching cups of coffee generously provided by the worn coffee maker in the back room, surrounded by what looked to be a small fortress of books.

"Quite a place you've got here," Dean said, glancing around at the carefully arranged walls of books, eyeing the just-chipped-enough coffee mugs. He was only half joking.

"Shh," was the only thing the other man said. He appeared to be _communing _for lack of a better term, with his coffee. He had both hands wrapped around the mug, although one was looser than the other and seemed less aware of itself; the cup drawn up close to his lips but not quite touching. He breathed in once, seeming to soak in not just the scent of the caffeinated beverage, but its very essence, that essential thing that made it _coffee _and not anything else. In that moment Dean was suddenly and inexplicably jealous of the strange bookseller who lived in colors and seemed to experience everything just a little _more _than everyone and everything else.

A minute trickled past. A quiet, frozen minute. Then James twitched and Dean felt like he was allowed to move again. Taking a deep swig of his coffee, relishing the nasty, grungy burn of it as it scorched its way down his throat, he asked, "So what has you awake at five am?"

Blue eyes blinked slowly, tiny pin-pricks of white-hot light reflected from the flashlight sitting between them shone from his pupils. "Some things don't allow themselves to be forgotten lightly," he said cryptically, drinking deeply from his own mug.

And for some reason, Dean knew exactly what he was talking about. "Yeah," he murmured in quiet agreement.

They didn't talk again after that. Just sat in silence and drank their coffee, and when that ran out, read some of the books piled up around them. Dean wasn't quite sure when Claire wandered down and joined them, but she did at some point because he looked up around five-thirty and saw her snuggled up against her father's side, reading over his shoulder as he rubbed gentle circles across her shoulder blades. The next time Dean glanced up Sam was sitting on the floor leaning against the counter, face buried in 'The Cry of the Icemark'. Dean kicked him gently, and Sam kicked back just as lightly. Six o'clock and then seven crept bashfully around, as if time itself was a bit embarrassed to be passing through such a quiet, perfect moment. Somewhere between six and seven Gabriel sauntered in bearing cinnamon rolls and more coffee and for some reason even this didn't break the peace and quiet. Instead seven o'clock found Gabriel squashed into their little huddle between Claire and Sam, nose stuck in a battered copy of 'Good Omens'.

"I've got to go," Dean broke the silence as the minute hand slid closer to eight than seven. He felt guilty for breaking the silence, the way he had felt guilty when he broke one of his mother's favorite plates at age seven. Like he had shattered a precious thing and couldn't quite bring himself to face the fact that it would never be the same again.

Sam looked startled by the sudden sound, blinking floppy hair and pages of distraction out of his eyes as he peered owlishly up at Dean. "Do you really?" And, medical doctorate or not, Dean could still hear the ghost the toddler Sam had been the first day six-year-old Dean had left for kindergarten.

"Yeah, Sammy, I've gotta be back in New York by Monday morning. I only got a week of leave," Dean told him gruffly, giving him a friendly slap on the shoulder as he stood.

"_Boring!_" Gabriel sang out from behind his paperback.

"Yeah, well, we can't all be man-children that subsist off of Skittles and dreams," Dean teased, kicking Gabriel's foot.

The shorter man looked up indignantly, "I'll have you know that I've improved. I've made room for some dietary _variety _thank you very much!"

"He eats Mom's apple pie now," Sam clarified. "You remember the pies she baked for my house-warming?"

"_Pies?" _Dean squawked, "There were more than one?!"

"_Were _being the operative word in that sentence."

"Hey, the pie goddess gave you _two pies! _I deserved one, I call it 'pie tax'!"

"The _'pie goddess' _is my mom!" Sam protested, "That's it, you're not invited to parties at my place anymore."

Dean snorted; Sam was kidding. Despite the fact that they were kind of weird, Gabriel, Claire and even James were quickly becoming Sam's friends. It was obvious from his relaxed voice and posture that there people would be occupying Sam's life for a good long time. Dean was glad, even though it made him the tiniest bit jealous. He wanted to know that his baby brother had friends to take care of him when Dean wasn't around to look out for him.

"Bye guys, Sammy, come help me haul my stuff out to the Impala," Dean redirected the conversation.

"Toodles, Deano!" chirped Gabriel, just to hear Dean grumble about the annoying nickname.

"Bye, Dean, see you soon," Claire grinned and bounced to her feet to give Dean a hug.

There was a moment of silence as everyone waited for James to say some sort of parting phrase. Dean wondered what he would say. Finally, as the silence stretched on, teetering on the edge of awkward, the dark-haired bookseller said, not even bothering to glance up from the Robert Frost poetry collection balanced on his knees, "Stay gold, Dean Winchester."

Claire snorted and smacked her father with the copy of 'The Outsiders' in her hand. Dean assumed she got whatever literary reference which had just soared over his head. "Right back at you, James," he shot back at the man sitting on the floor. James peered at him over the edge of the book and raised both eyebrows slowly, expression unreadable before going back to reading.

* * *

Dean left with a minimum of fanfare after that. He drove off in his big black car and left all of them a bit confused and disoriented in his wake. Gabe meandered back to his bakery as Claire and Castiel wandered around the bookstore, picking up what didn't really need picking up and cleaning off that which didn't really require cleaning off. Sam sat and watched them, listening to the sounds of the contractors working on what would soon be his clinic next door.

"That was Robert Frost, wasn't it?" Sam said unexpectedly in the middle of yet another stretch of mid-morning silence.

Castiel smiled, un-surprised that Sam would get the reference. "Yes, with a bit of S. E. Hinton overtones."

"Stay gold, Ponyboy," quoted Claire from the other side of the shop.

"A bit dark for a goodbye," Sam hedged.

Castiel sighed, he had never had much patience for beating around the bush. That was something he had loved about being a twin. With Jimmy there had never been any hedging or half-truths or almost-statements. It was all very straightforward and beautifully blunt. Amelia was the one who could never get to the point. It drove Castiel crazy. He sometimes wondered if it was a relief to Jimmy, her tact, all those extra words polluting the air. He sometimes wondered if Jimmy had ever resented Castiel's inability to sugar-coat anything. If sometimes in their adult life Jimmy fled home, back to his wife, just to get away from Castiel and his 'eyes that saw everything and freaking _judged _it all'. That had been a bad night, the night that Jimmy had said that. He had apologized the next day and probably forgotten it. But Castiel remembered. And it rubbed at his nerves today, a break that never quite healed and would never quite heal.

Castiel shook off memories and looked Sam in the eye, "Remember what a goodbye is before you judge mine. They have always been rather…indigo things."

"Yeah," muttered Sam, staring off into the distance.

"Am I the only one who woke up dreading something this morning?" blurted out Claire. She flushed and slapped a hand over her mouth, looking intensely awkward.

"Yeah," repeated Sam, "Something going to happen. I don't like it."

Castiel nodded, shifting uneasily.

They didn't see Dean Winchester for another two and a half months. The next time Castiel and Claire saw the man he sighed heavily and dropped into a seat at their kitchen table and rested his chin on his fists, "Staying gold is harder than it looks," he said, staring down at the grain of the wood on the table.

But that isn't important just yet. They still have two and a half months left to go.

**Author's Note: And with that nasty little cliffhanger, I leave you to await the next chapter! I promise, I'll update this as soon as possible. I hate cliffhangers too. **

**So yeah, this one kinda came out of nowhere, I was all prepared to write another light, funny non-sense chapter, but no, plot showed up and was all, 'thou shalt write character and plot developing words and they shall be chapter three'. And I did that just that. I hope you liked it! **

**Please review, even if it's just a few words, I do love to hear from you guys! **

**See ya next chapter! **


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter 4: Michael Winchester **

**Author's Note: I do not know much about how SWAT/police operations work. Please go easy on my poor ignorant self if I make any mistakes in representing Dean's work. **

For Dean Winchester time slid past, pace strange and loping, marked not by the passage of days and weeks but by texts from Sam and calls from his mother and deadlines tossed at him by his sergeant. Almost every day found Dean sitting in his cubicle, typing report after report, pounding tales of crime and blood and violence into dispassionate keys and clinical terms. These swaths of reports and warrants were punctuated with bursts of movement, late-night calls, tense minutes of adrenaline and bulletproof vests and checking ammo for the goddamn millionth time because his uncle Sergeant Michael Winchester was such an OCD hardass about preparedness. And then there was the bursting through doors and the pointing of guns and the shouting and the pound of officious boots against concrete as they surrounded the suspect. And then it was all over and the adrenaline drained away and there was really nothing much left.

If Dean had bothered to consider it, he might have come to the realization that he was living a rather charcoal-grey-colored life here in New York. But he didn't consider it, because he was not the sort to ponder the infinite color wheel of the human soul and he didn't have any reason to ask James (a man he barely knew, after all, who lived in a town a few hundred miles away) about it. But if Dean _had _thought about it, he would have considered his life to be lurking about on the dark end of the grayscale.

And so another month and a half spun its way into infinity, never to return. It was early September when everything tipped on its axis, not to begin rotating again for a good long time. The day started innocuous enough. There was nothing to suggest that this was a critical turning point for anyone in their lives. But as Castiel (or James, considering that Dean honestly believed him to _be_ James) would have pointed out, had he been given the opportunity, was that beginnings could be pink and raw and delicate and that there was just too much that could hurt them.

…

Hundreds of miles away, in Orcastle, Claire Novak jumped out of bed, ready for the first day of eighth grade. She dashed out the door, sneakered feet pumping beneath her as she raced off, snatching the backpack Castiel held out to her. He leaned against the doorframe, watching her. Feeling his blue eyes on her back, she stopped and turned to look at him.

"You will have a good day today, princess," he told her, the blue of his eyes soft and muted and gentle, "It's a lavender day, after all. Lavender days are the best sort for beginnings."

Heart suddenly filled with an unexpected warmth, Claire darted back to the doorway, throwing her arms around a surprised Castiel. She buried her face in his shirt and breathed in the smell of home. Oil paint and old books and coffee so black drinking it was probably a health hazard wafted up to tickle her nose.

"Bye, Castiel," she whispered, so quiet only his soul could hear the words. Backing off and releasing him, she turned to bolt down the stairs, yelling as she went, "Lavender for beginnings!"

…

In New York City Dean Winchester awoke to the sound of porcelain hitting formica and the sting of coffee droplets splashing his cheek. Peeling his face off his desk, he looked up to see a younger version of his father glowering down at him. Wait, no, John Winchester was dead. Had been for years. This was Michael. Uncle Mikey. The bastard who had gotten him this stupid job in the first place. And he had brought coffee after Dean pulled an all-nighter at the office. Damn, Dean loved this stupid-ass family.

Sergeant Michael Winchester (who would deny, on pain of everlasting torment, any association with the name 'Uncle Mikey') kept on glaring, clearly not interested in any form of family bonding. "Get yourself up and caffeinated, boy, we're going to need you in a few hours."

"Love you too, Uncle Mikey."

"Silence, fool."

"Not scared of you."

"Your loss, child."

Dean chuckled and took a swig of his coffee. Then spat it out. Then tentatively tasted it again. Nope, still tasted like Hudson River in a mug. Spitting it out one more time…

"Damn, Sarge, this stuff tastes like sewage on a sunny day!"

"My heart bleeds for you, son," Michael said in his dry, supercilious voice.

Yep, Dean really loved his family. Today was going to be a rough one. Just like the one before, just like the one coming up in twenty-four-hours. Nothing began, nothing ended. It was kinda perfect in its own twisted way.

…

"Have a good day!" Sam shouted to Claire as he propped the door to his clinic open.

"I will!" she yelped, "It's a lavender one, bound to be good!"

Sam chuckled, lavender days. He should tell Dean. His brother had taken a liking to the indecipherable color-code his neighbors lived by. Well, not so much a 'liking' as a steadfast denial of a liking. A denial so strong it couldn't be anything other than fondness. Yes, Winchesters were twisted and some of them probably needed therapy. Sam acknowledged this. Then again, he was the one who didn't need therapy.

…

"You know, they offer therapy to jackasses like you who need to work out their anger issues," Dean drawled, leaning against his cubicle, critiquing his uncle after the older man had just shouted at some junior officers for what could have been, admittedly, a pretty significant screw-up if it wasn't caught in time. The junior guys had crawled away with their tails between their legs. Michael was breathing hard; doing that weird thing he'd always done where he stood incredibly straight and stiff, movements controlled and tight, like the force of his fury was slowly freezing his body into the perfect pose.

"I have no need for _therapy,_ child," Michael informed him, scanning the maps and markers and case notes pinned to the corkboard in front of him.

"Okey-dokey, whatever you say," Dean raised an eyebrow at his former mentor, surprised to see Michael still trying to catch his breath. "Hey, Uncle Mike, are you ok?" he asked, newly concerned.

"I am perfectly fine," Michael hissed, "I just need to find where they're going to be. This case, it's…ergh, I can see the patterns, they make a picture, but not a whole one. There are GODDAMN PIECES MISSING! And I have to solve this case, Dean. Even if it kills me."

Dean was getting more than a little concerned. "Well, I'm going to pick up some Indian food, I'll bring some back for you."

"I hate Indian food."

"Alright, I'll change it, what do you want?"

Michael, "I need feeding, boy, the end justifies the means. The end: I will be full. The means: detestable curry and naan."

"You liked Indian food last week."

"Don't question destiny," was Michael's only comeback. Dean thought he might have caught the edge of a wry smile as the older man voiced those familiar words. Indian food it was. Thirty minutes later, Dean watched, not daring to so much as snicker as Michael ate all his naan and curry and half of Dean's. Ends justifying the means? Destiny? Ha. Dean would have laughed if he wasn't so sure that Michael could make his life a living hell if he wanted to .

…

"It's DESTINY!"

"Uncle Gabe, my destiny is not to take a bunch of your experimental new recipes to school and test them on my friends."

"It's for SCIENCE, Claire! _Science." _

"No, we are not using my friends as your guinea pigs!"

"But it's a lavender day…"

"No, experiments aren't a new beginning. They're the ending of my tastebuds!"

"You're no fun," Gabriel pouted.

"I know," Claire grinned and snatched her lunch off of the counter. Knowing Gabe, he'd probably snuck one of his weird new recipes into it.

Gabriel rolled his eyes, sighing in defeat. Some things you just couldn't change.

…

Dean trailed after Michael as the older Winchester strode away from the interrogation room.

"This changes everything," his uncle muttered, almost too quiet for Dean to hear.

"Yeah, it does. But, Uncle Mike, are you sure -?"

"Dean, get a crew together, we're going after these vermin."

"But Uncle Mike, don't you think we're going too fast on this one…?"

"Dean. I gave an order."

"Dude, I know you want to get these guys for what they did to -."

"OFFICER WINCHESTER!"

"Yes, sir."

Michael stepped in close, slicing through Dean's personal space like a perfectly honed blade. "You will follow orders. And we will get these sick vermin. You will get a team together. Do you understand?"

Dean met his eyes for as long as he could, gritting out a handful of words, "Would Anna want this done this way?"

For a few seconds Dean honestly though his uncle might hit him, right here in the station. But instead Michael turned and walked away without another word, stopping only once, halfway down the hall, to get another mug of god-awful-coffee. Dean watched him go. Watched him down the coffee-flavored sludge in one go. Watched him chuck the Styrofoam cup in the trash, turn and keep walking. Michael did not look back once.

…

The bell above the bookshop dinged. Castiel, not bothering to look up from his book, casually lifted a rubber band gun from the counter and shot the irritating chime. It dislodged from its perch and dropped into the hands of one unsuspecting Dr. Winchester.

"Good reflexes," Castiel complimented. He still hadn't looked up from his book. It was more interesting than the outside world right now, anyway.

Sam Wichester shuffled into his peripheral vision. Castiel turned a page. Sam cleared his throat. Castiel highlighted a phrase he particularly liked. Sam hummed tunelessly. Castiel was tone-deaf and couldn't care less.

Sam coughed again, "I can see why Dean finds you so frustrating. This is really awkward. And kind of annoying."

Castiel shot him a _look _over the top of his book. "Don't you go being puce about it, too."

There was another moment of silence as Castiel tried to read and Sam focused all his energy on bitchfacing at him until the other man felt compelled to pay attention to him.

"You win, although for the record, that was unpleasantly magenta of you." Castiel set his book down on the counter, folding his hands atop the worn paper cover, automatically moving his left to cover his damaged right. He knew that no one could see the scars on the damaged hand when he wore long sleeves, but the urge to protect the old wound ran strong and deep in his veins.

Sam looked like he was seconds away from commenting on the 'magenta' statement but was actively resisting the urge.

"I see the world in color. If you want further explanation you'll have to actually gather the courage and/or rudeness to ask," Castiel informed him.

Sam shook his head, hair flopping everywhere, "No, I'm not here for rude questions or…whatever the hell that was." He ran a hand down his face, staring off into the middle distance. "Do you remember the day Dean left? Do you remember the dread?"

Castiel closed his eyes, remembering the echoes of fire and smoke that had pulled him from sleep at the wee hours of the morning, remembering the strange, surreal morning he and Dean and their respective families had spent on the floor of the store, just reading. The faint taste of desperation that had clung to those early hours like a needy date rang in his mind. They had all been _reaching_, that morning. Trying to reassure themselves and each other. Oh yes, he remembered the dread. He hadn't felt that sort of dread in a long time. A very long time.

"Yes," he told Sam. "It came back this morning."

It was not a question, but Sam answered it as such anyway. "Yeah. I want to call my brother."

"I want to pray," Castiel admitted, "And I barely know the man."

"My brother or God?"

"Both."

…

Dean stood in the locker room, watching Michael and trying to convince himself that his uncle's plan was a good idea. Storm the warehouse, take as many alive as possible, shoot if they shoot, get the kidnapped women out, try not to die. Dean closed his eyes, hands coming up, unbidden, to his temples and trying to rub away the headache brewing there. He turned away from the sight of Michael getting his gear and instead focused on the photos taped to the inside of his own locker.

All of his family, living and dead, beamed back at him. A snapshot from this last trip to Orcastle, Sam and Dean standing in front of what would soon become Dr. Winchester's clinic. Fuzzy and indistinct in the background were Sammy's neighbors. Gabriel was in mid-air, trying to tackle James, who had stepped aside seconds before. Claire was taking the photo, Dean could see distortions where a few of her blonde hairs had blown into the frame. Another pic from the last trip showed Sam and him with their tiny blonde mom sandwiched between them, a huge smile painted across Mary's face. A slightly older picture showed the Winchester family the day they moved Dean and Sam's adoptive brother Adam out to college. John, alive and grinning, had an arm around Mary and an arm around the kid who had started out as just another one of the Wichesters' foster kids and grew to become Sam and Dean's baby brother. Sam and Dean were laughing and goofing off on the side. Then there were the pics from Sam's graduation day and Adam's high school graduation, and an old photo of Dean and his college friends laughing together holding diplomas. Finally Dean's roaming eye caught on the one he was unconsciously searching for.

It was the oldest of the lot. Faded and slightly brown around the edges, it showed John and Mary Winchester's wedding day. Two couples, bride and groom, maid of honor and best man, stood posed together, beaming. John and Mary were practically glowing with happiness, but for once Dean wasn't looking at them. His eyes were glued to the other pair. A woman in a pale blue dress, a torrent of firey red hair cascading down her back leaned into a dark-haired man, inches away from a kiss.

That was Anna.

The dark-haired man was Dean's Uncle Michael.

This photo was taken exactly five years and eight months before Anna disappeared.

They didn't find her body until another year had passed.

Six months ago her killers had appeared to resurface, dragging Michael and now Dean back into a case they should never have had to survive. And now, after one pivotal interview, Michael thought he knew where to go, where they would find the sick bastards who had killed his wife. Dean felt sick, the dread he remembered from his last day in Orcastle building and rising and choking him in its sticky, sickly grip.

He shot another look at Michael, only to find his sergeant standing beside him, also staring at the photo from John and Mary's wedding. "Let's go, Winchester," he said, voice dark and different than Dean remembered it. It was painful to hear and miserable to listen to.

Michael turned away and strode off. Dean followed, gear in hand, closing his locker door behind him. It was time to right a wrong.

…

Back in Orcastle Claire gritted her teeth through her Algebra homework.

Castiel gave up on reading, or shelving books or anything else productive. Instead he sketched on spare scraps of printer paper, trying to read the end of this particularly twisted tale of a day in the wild lines of graphite.

Gabe burned a tray of croissants for the first time in over a decade. He just muttered "Typical." Because it was for this afternoon. He could sense the wind changing. Gabriel was a creature of change.

Sam did and re-did the same inane tasks he had been doing to prep the clinic for its business opening in a few weeks. He resisted the urge to call Dean eight times. He resisted the urge to call Michael five. He actively considered calling Adam twice. In the end he called his mother because she seemed like the only one who wouldn't laugh at him for the sense of foreboding that clung to him.

…

The SWAT team waited, surrounding the building. Dean could feel his breathing evening out, falling into the same old steady heartbeat-like rhythm. Michael's breath rasped too fast and too harsh beside him. Dean reached out for his mentor and uncle, bracing a steadying hand on the other man's shoulder. Michael didn't even notice.

…

Somewhere in Orcastle a pencil tapped. A bird sang. The bell now exiled to the floor of Castiel's shop continued to oscillate infinitely on a wavelength too small for human perception.

…

As soon as Michael gave the order to move in, Dean's world exploded. There was gunfire everywhere, the sharp retort of weapons and the bark of shouted orders and screaming victims drowning out any signs that there was more to the world than this bullet-drenched instant. Dean dropped low and ran, shooting when shot at, trying to catch sight of Michael, trying to spot his Sergeant.

CRACK-CRACK-BOOM!

Howling noise and sudden heat took over Dean's senses, hijacking his brain to feed him a sudden unwanted stream of data. Either someone's stray bullet hit something flammable in the warehouse or one of the thugs had torched something to try and take down the cops with them. Either way, the building was on fire now, hungry tongues of flame licking and lapping their way up the dry, brittle wood, eating away at it like a starving cat.

Dean snapped into action, moving with his comrades, a synchronized unit, grabbing the victims and hustling them out, watching each other's backs and picking off any threats. But Dean couldn't see Michael.

Where the hell was Michael?

The victims were out, the team was withdrawing. Someone was yanking on Dean's arm, pulling him away from the snarling beast that the fire had become. But Dean couldn't see Michael. Yanking away from the hands restraining him, Dean ran back in.

Those minutes in that inferno taught Dean what Hell looked like.

Then suddenly, there he was, Michael. A dead man lay at his feet. Michael had his service pistol in hand, posture just as stiff and held and just a hair too close to perfect as ever as he stared down at the man he must have killed. "This was the one, Dean. He saw her last moments. He fucking _reveled _in them." There was a pause and Dean was sure he could hear feet shifting and clattering on the floor nearby. Damn, there must still be thugs about. He had to get Michael and him away from here.

"My work here is done, Dean. I tried to arrest him, but he bolted. I pursued. He fired on me. I fired on him." Michael's shoulders sagged a bit and he ran a hand down his face, coughs racking his body as the smoke trickled into his lungs. "I'm so tired, Dean, so tired."

"Lets go home man," Dean grabbed his uncle's elbow and yanked him toward the door, "You can make your shitty coffee and we can watch crappy television and you can tell me what to do and what I'm doing wrong with my life just like you always do."

Michael nodded, eyes still distant, chest still heaving from coughs un-released.

They began to move, driving through the blazing mess of what used to be a building. Dean almost paused; sure he had heard the shift and crunch of gravel under another person's feet. A person not him or Michael. Michael heard it too, but he had always been better at anticipating danger than Dean was. Perhaps that was why things fell out the way they did. Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps. There are many perhapses but only one ending. And the ending is this:

Michael and Dean both heard the other footsteps. Michael moved first, throwing Dean down to the ground behind him, turning toward the noise. A new sound rang forward, a sharp crack that could have been a breaking beam or a shooting gun.

And Michael crumpled. Dean, disoriented, but knowing there was a threat out there; rose on his knees and shot into the seething mass of red and gold and hunger that was the fire. Out there in the burning world another crack rang out, mirroring Dean's. Pain exploded in Dean's left shoulder, crackling outward, burning up his nerves like the fire chewed up the building. Dean still managed to squeeze off another shot. Somewhere out there someone else crumpled, an illegal gun dropping from crime-soaked fingers.

Dean couldn't remember getting out of the fire. It was all a blur of red and black and gray and white-hot pain.

He woke up hours later, in a hospital bed, listening to the squeal of the machines as the man in the bed next to Dean's flat-lined.

The beautiful and terrible thing about painkillers is how one blink can eat up hours or minutes. One blink later all the scrubbed-up nurses and doctors and important medical types had dispersed from the hopeless flat-liner's bed. And Dean got a good look at the face of his now-deceased neighbor.

A younger version of his father lay there, white and waxen and not looking at all like he was 'only sleeping'. Dean's mind spiraled back to those last few days in the hospital with his dad. His dad hadn't looked peaceful in death either. Winchester men weren't really mean to go anywhere peacefully.

One blink later the bed next door was empty and Dean's face was wet. Apparently crying while sleeping was completely possible.

…

Sam got the phone call during dinner time. He dashed out of the clinic, fear clouding his vision, making him dizzy and sick. Spotting the bookseller standing in front of Beehive Books, Sam ran to him, tossed him his keys.

"It's Dean and our Uncle Michael."

"I already knew that," blue eyes stared sorrowfully out into the middle distance.

"Watch my place and…yeah…" Sam dragged shaking fingers through his hair.

"Stay chartreuse."

Sam jerked his head over to glare at the other man, ready to chew him out for bringing his color crap into a serious crisis. But the look on the other man's face was serious and seemed so damn _compassionate _and freaking _understanding. _And Sam thought he might get the color thing a little bit more.

"And tell Dean to stay amber. Or gold." And with that, the strange man was turning back into his own storefront.

"I know, I think I get it. I don't want this to change me either," Sam muttered, "When did staying gold get so damn hard?"

…

Dean Winchester suffered mild burns, some smoke damage to his lungs and one bullet to the left shoulder. He went home to Orcastle to recover. His resignation letter arrived at the station a week later.

Michael Winchester died a hero. He was buried beside his late wife. The whole Winchester clan showed up for his funeral.

…

Castiel, Gabriel and Claire watched Sam arrive, Dean in the passenger seat, the Impala rumbling its way up the road to pull up in front of the shopping center they all occupied. There was no heckling. Castiel felt Dean's eyes on him and turned, meeting a pained green gaze. "Stay gold, huh?" Dean muttered.

"Harder than it looks," Castiel murmured miserably, thinking of darkness and fire and charcoal grey days.

"Yeah, man. It sure as hell is."

Castiel sighed, staring up at the sky, watching it drip and run in weak blue rivulets as the clouds couldn't decide whether or not it should rain. Beginnings. Raw and pink and fragile things. They had one right here, even if it wasn't a lavender day.

**Author's Note: Sooo, yeah…sad chapter. I did warn you! But, I promise things get better! Next chapter will have more funny stuff in it! (yes, I realize that this chapter was kind of a cliffhanger too, sorry for that…what can I say, chapters need to end…and this seemed like the right place to break it off…ok, I'll shut up now, I can see the hole I dug myself deepening). **

**So yeah, this chapter was SAD! At least I hope that's how it read, because it was meant to be (for the most part). And yes, the parallels between Cas' fire and Dean and Michael's fire are intentional. Next chapter will focus on Dean settling into Orcastle and will have more fun with colors and Gabe being Gabe and Cas and Claire being Cas and Claire. And yeah, there'll be some emotional bits in it, but tone-wise it should be happier. So, with that cheery thought and a mild cliffhanger, I leave you chapter four! **

**Please review, I do read all of them and they make me very happy!**


	6. Chapter 6

**Chapter 5: Friends and Enemies and Family**

**Author's Note: Guest reviewer Saddeer, because you don't have an account I can't message you, but I wanted to thank you for your kind words! Thank you for reviewing!**

**And thank you everyone with accounts who have been reviewing, you should be receiving personal messages from me thanking you for your reviews. :) I appreciate hearing from you guys!**

**Also, side note on this chapter, sorry if this is messy and bleh, I'm really tired right now and I'm just hoping this chapter manages to make sense. **

The phone rang in Castiel's apartment and there was a strong chance he wouldn't answer it. Claire listened to it ring and ring, endless peals of jarring, jangling sound rasping against her eardrums. She glanced at the door to her uncle's room. It was shut and silent, the door a quiet warning to the outside world not to intrude. It was nine o'clock at night. Dean Winchester had come home a few hours earlier, burned and broken. After she, Gabe, and Castiel helped Sam get Dean settle Claire watched Castiel turn away and wander back to their apartment. Once safely within the bounds of his own realm Castiel removed his tie, tossing it to the ground, a puddle of abandoned blue silk coiled up on the hardwood. Claire stood in the doorway, watching as he stripped off his white button-down and flung it carelessly aside. He stood in the middle of their apartment, incongruous in his black slacks and white t-shirt. Burn scars spun their way up his right arm, bubbling through the skin and ducking beneath the edges of the shirt as if embarrassed to be seen. He held up his damaged right hand and stared at the scars, tracing them with his eyes. Claire saw the way the set of his shoulders shifted just a bit right before he dropped his hand and wandered into his room.

"Come get me if you need me," he told her.

Then the door closed behind him.

The rich, slick scent of paint and the harsh, searing tang of paint thinner trickled out from beneath the door to Castiel's room and Claire couldn't help but imagine the colors themselves slipping out too, escaping into the world, siphoning off the memories of fire and death that she knew haunted him even now. Claire didn't mind the hours Castiel spent in his room, painting or drawing or writing. She didn't begrudge him that time. It did make her sad though, the knowledge that none of those painting or drawings or scribblings would see the light of day. "Castiel Novak" was dead, there would be no more art shows or book releases for her uncle.

No, Claire did not begrudge Castiel his time with his art.

But now the phone was ringing and Claire was wondering if anyone was going to bother answering it. It was one ring away from voicemail when she heard the click of her uncle picking up the call. "Hello, you've reached the Swedish Embassy. If you're from Norway, hang up bitch. If you're here for the fish-candies, we aren't running that promotion anymore. If you're here for international politics you probably shouldn't be leaving messages full of sensitive information, now should you?"

Claire smothered the urge to giggle. _This _was why she never answered the phone. It may be mean of her, but she knew her uncle hated phones. Of all kinds. With the kind of burning, passion loathing usually reserved for bubonic plague and rival sports teams. So whenever Castiel picked up 'that aggravatingly magenta device' he made sure the person on the other end of the line was 'completely dedicated to their cause'. 'Their cause' being the use of the phone to contact him. He determined the other person's 'dedication' through the simple expedient of never answering the phone as himself.

Clarie couldn't hear what the other person's response was exactly, but it was apparently important enough that Castiel's door swung open and Castiel himself swept out, phone still held in one hand. "Yes, Sam, I'll be right over. Don't be lime green about this; that color clashes with chartreuse. No, you will never stop being the Chartreuse Man. Yes, you could change your entire personality, but knowing you it would be to something equally ridiculous like Alizarin Crimson and then where would you be?" There was a lull in the conversation as Castiel tried to listen to whatever Sam said and put his button-down and tie back on one-handed at the same time.

Finally Castiel sighed, "Yes, Sam, don't worry. We'll be there." And with that he hung up. Castiel Novak was never one for goodbyes.

"Claire, Sam Winchester needs help. I'm going. Do you want to stay here and wallow in homework or listen in on the grown-ups conversation?" He raised an eyebrow slightly. It would have been a jaunty expression if he didn't look so tired and sad.

"Do you really need to ask?" Claire raised an eyebrow right back, a warm glow of happiness starting in her stomach when a smile flickered across Castiel's lips and stuck.

"That's my girl," Castiel held a hand out for her to take. She grabbed it and used it to haul herself to her feet.

"Lets' go."

* * *

"I don 't need you guys to do much, just check in on him, sit with him as much as possible, and for god's sake, make sure he takes his damn pain meds!" Sam Winchester sat at his kitchen table, elbows propped against the wood, eyes serious, "I can't be here with him all the time, and I know he's going to be asleep for most of the time, but seriously, he gets lonely when he's stuck in bed, or on the couch as it were, and -."

"We get it, Samsquatch, look after Dean-o while you're at work! No need to get all bug-eyed!" Gabe threw up his hands as if to defend himself from the determined look in Sam's hazel eyes.

"I know you guys probably need to work, and Claire's in school," Sam sounded almost apologetic, an awkward haze of periwinkle taking over his attitude.

Castiel cut him off; he didn't much like periwinkle, "No we don't."

"What?"

"Need to work. We don't."

"At the risk of sounding like a broken record, what?"

Claire sighed, "Uncle Gabe's side of the family is kind of loaded. Working is more of a hobby for him than anything else."

"Trust fund baby for the win!" Gabe said with dry irony.

"And money is not a great concern for me," Castiel said simply, not interested in elaborating on the fact that he still received royalties for his published books from the old days. The publishers just happened to think they were paying his twin now.

"Are you guys sure?" Sam looked vaguely hopeful and distrusting all at the same time.

"Yeppers, Samsquatch! We can look after Deanny-boy." Gabe was obviously trying extra hard right now, forcing the sheer yellowness of his attitude outwards as if he could paint them all that sunny shade and somehow eradicate the darkness nibbling at their ankles. But Castiel could see the brunt umber sliding beneath the yellow waves. Even Gabe was not immune to tragedy.

"Ok," Sam ran a hand through his over-long hair, "So he's going to be on the couch all day for the next week or so, don't let him be too active. As we wean him off painkillers he's going to get stubborn and want to do more…"

Castiel, Claire and Gabe absorbed all Dr. Sam Winchester had to tell them. They had a job to do.

* * *

Dean woke up to the smell of casserole. He hated casserole. He hated casserole almost as much as he hated folk music and iPod jacks in his Impala. Although, through the foggy haze of painkillers and numbness, he could hear voices off in Sammy's kitchen. Voices that apparently hated casserole as much as he did.

"Reject."

"Gabriel, you can't just reject it out of hand."

"Yes I can."

"On what basis?"

"It's like a weird lasagna-casserole mutant. And it has _peas _in it. You know how I feel about _peas._ This thing is unholy, I'm telling you, Jamie."

There was a crinkle of aluminum foil and the huff of a single, delicate sniff. A pause. "I agree. We are not allowing anyone to consume that. It's _chamoisee." _

"See? I told you so…Chamoisee is a color, right? Not some weird food-dissing term I should know?"

"It's an unappealing shade of vomit-ish-brown in most cases."

"Then yeah, it totes applies."

"Please try to sound as educated as you actually are, Gabriel. Claire doesn't even say 'totes' and she's thirteen."

The voices trailed off in a smog of tiredness and aching numbness, but Dean did have a moment of incongruous happiness. James and Gabriel had saved him from eating _peas. _They were his new heroes.

* * *

Dean slid and out of awareness for the next twenty-four hours and apparently the casseroles kept pouring in. Dean recalled a short spurt of wakefulness in which he had enough presence of mind to ask Sam where all the casseroles and crap came from.

His brother snorted, "Apparently everyone and their brother in Orcastle feels like the best way to handle an injured hero is to drop off dishes of goop that might be creatively referred to as 'casseroles'. Gabe and James have been going through them and tossing the more inedible ones."

Dean, already fading back into sleep, chuckled dreamily, "Good, always hated peas, y'know?"

* * *

Dean's first lucid day was boring as hell. He was alone for most of it as Gabriel and James had both admitted that they did need to open their respective stores at least once this week. Dean spent most of his time surfing his brother's tv's limited channels (the sasquatch was apparently too cheap to pay for cable) and trying and failing to doze off. Things didn't get anywhere near interesting until around one in the afternoon.

A clatter-bang was the only warning Dean got before a trenchcoat-wearing bookseller had shoved his way through the door and into the living room, armed with a stack of books and a blue-eyed glare. James dumped the books on the table as if the furniture had personally offended him and the books needed to teach it a stern lesson. James popped back upright, glared around the room, fixed Dean with an icy stare, snatched the remote from the other man's unprotesting fingers and turned off the Spongebob Squarepants rerun Dean had been half-watching. "You are better than this," was all James would say before throwing himself into an armchair, snatching a book and shoving the rest of the pile at Dean.

Dean, bemused despite himself, glanced down at the pile. "What've you got here?"

"Overstock."

"Uh-huh, and you're here out of purely capitalist motives? Trying to fob overstock off on me?" Dean cocked an eyebrow doubtfully.

"Pick a book and stop being cerulean about it."

Dean chuckled and grabbed a battered copy of 'The Fellowship of the Ring.'

James made a curious noise.

"What?" Dean growled, ready to defend the masculinity of reading about badass fantasy creatures fighting badass fantasy battles.

"Interesting choice. I prefer 'Two Towers'. Less irritating tree imagery. The wilderness descriptions were excessive and distracting in 'Fellowship'."

"Dude, you did not just diss Lord of the freaking Rings. You're a bookshop owner!"

James did not respond. Dean grumped at him for a solid minute. But, not drawing a response got boring so he just decided to read in silence. He made sure to read any good bits of tree imagery out loud. Really loudly.

* * *

This became a pattern. Every day, James would show up at Sam's apartment, arms full of books, head apparently full of sarcasm and weird color analogies. Every day they would grab books, James would make some snarky comment and Dean would snap at him and James wouldn't give him a good fight, just let him snarl.

At three-thirty Claire appeared on the doorstep, homework and cello in tow. She would spread it all out, algebra and astronomy mixing with _Lord of the Rings _and Agatha Christie. Close to dinner time Claire would practice her cello and Sam would come home from the clinic. Once upon a time he had always gotten home after her impromptu performance. That lasted until he caught the tail end of a piece she was running. Now Sam always got back in time to catch every note.

Dean wasn't really a cello person. Alright, to be honest, he hated classical music with a passion only rivaled by his loathing for casseroles. But Claire didn't play classical music. She played something else entirely. In her hands those stodgy old notes from stodgy old composers transformed into something ethereal and not completely of this world. Beautiful and heartbreaking and indescribable. Dean was sure he had caught Sam with watery eyes after one particularly powerful evening and he knew that Gabriel always ended up sniffling whenever the little baker caught Claire practicing. Even Dean would admit (but only quietly, in the very back of him mind where no one would hear it, not even God…he hoped) that a few of the better pieces had left him a little teary-eyed. But only a little. And they were _manly_ tears, dammit!

James was the only one who could remain stoic throughout an entire piece of music. He would listen, a small smile on his face, blue eyes following every tiny movement of Claire's fingers as they whispered across the strings. But he didn't seem to _react. _His features remained in the same pleasant, distracted expression for a soothing lullaby as they did for a roaring crescendo or even basic scales. One night Dean finally had had enough and just asked. Dean had never been one for tact. "What's with your face, dude? You never react."

James raised a single eyebrow, "I do not understand the question."

Dean almost shrugged, bit back a yelp of pain, and reconsidered creative shoulder movement. "Your face, you've got the same expression for the entire performance, don't you feel anything?"

James just shrugged. Dean was instantly (and embarrassingly) slightly jealous of the blue-eyed bastard and his shoulder-shrugging abilities.

"What, are you some kind of robot? What's your deal?" Dean continued to pester the other man, realizing he should probably let it go, but too committed to the question to pull back.

"I am not human, Dean," James smiled enigmatically.

"Uh-huh," Dean played along, "Then what are you?"

"I am a wavelength of thought and sound energy. This body is but a vessel. My true form the size of your Chrysler building." And with a second mysterious smirk, James began to walk away.

"What? No, no walking away like that, dammit!" Dean was irrationally irritated with the weirdo living next door.

Claire huffed a sigh, "He's tone-deaf and likes to mess with people," she explained, "I promise he's not actually crazy. I think." She grinned and Dean wondered if she secretly liked messing with people as much as her dad apparently did.

Dean laughed. "Well, tell him not to get a big head. The Chrysler Building's lame."

Claire chuckled, "And this is why you two are friends," and then she was gone, taking her cello with her.

"Huh," Dean said into the sudden quiet.

"What?" Sam asked from the kitchen.

"Learning new stuff, you'd approve, you big nerd."

"Basic information about our neighbors doesn't count as 'learning', bro."

"Oh, so you knew he was tone-deaf?"

"Uh, yeah. Gabe uses it to prank him. At least once a week the music in the bookstore is switched to Justin Beiber or 'Barbie Girl' on repeat. James doesn't notice and it doesn't get fixed until Claire gets home," Sam grimaced comically.

"Damn, I'd like to see that, I bet it's hilarious."

"Yeah, it gets annoying really quick," Sam had a pained look on his face and Dean was resisting the urge to bust out laughing.

There was a lull in the conversation as Dean chuckled a bit and Sam grimaced at him. After a few minutes, Dean broke the strange quiet. "Since when are James and I friends?"

Sam snorted, "You just now figured it out?"

"I'm pretty sure he doesn't like me."

"Uh-huh."

"And I'm pretty sure I don't like him."

"See, friends," Sam pointed out, snickering as Dean threw a pillow at him, "Seriously, Dean, they're a little weird but these people are good. You're lucky if they're your friends."

Dean snorted, but he was still smiling. Just a little bit, though.

* * *

It's late at night and Castiel is still awake. This is common enough. He doesn't really sleep, after all. Claire doesn't know how little time Castiel actually spends sleeping. For the past eight years it's been catnaps and four-hour REMs and the occasional stolen six hours on a really good night. A good therapist would have said it was trauma left over from waking up to the roar of the fire and the choking smoke tearing apart what he had. A good therapist might have prescribed him sleeping pills. And Castiel wouldn't have taken them. He was stubborn like that about strange things.

Whatever the reason, whatever the rhyme, Castiel was awake at two in the morning. Feeling trapped in his room, he meandered into the living, then spilled into the kitchen. Finally he ended up on the tile floor, leaning against a cabinet, laptop balanced across his knees. He glared at the screen, stabbing irritable fingers into keys that just wouldn't tap out the proper words.

Sighing, Castiel tipped his head back, resting it against the smooth wood of the drawer behind him, considering the wisdom of deleting the last fifteen pages. Silence slid into the darkness, staining the world a mysterious navy blue. Castiel liked navy. It was soothing and peaceful and perfect and strong. He felt safe in a navy-infused world.

A shuffling sound. Out in the hall. Castiel sat up, listening, every muscle tense and ready for fight or flight. He felt like a bird perched, about to take off or attack. Setting aside the laptop, Castiel slipped through the darkness, prowling toward the door, footsteps backlit by the trickle of light from the dim screen. He got to the door, slid it open, just a crack. He peered into the dimness, dark-adjusted eyes catching details daylight people would miss.

There was a man in the hallway. He stumbled slightly, staggering. His breath hissed out in a painful rush as he collided with the wall.

"Damn…what? What'sa goin' on?" the man slurred, voice groggy. And familiar.

"Dean Winchester?" Castiel asked softly, watching as the man-shaped figured turned and slid down the wall until he sat on the floor, back to the wall.

"Yeah…where am I?" he mumbled, running a hand down his face.

"In the hallway."

"Really? Weird place to be. Y'know, I don't remember any hallways when I fell asleep…"

"Huh," Castiel looked at him, head cocked to the side, considering.

"Why am I in the hallway?" Dean asked, as if Castiel could somehow provide and answer to that (not completely invalid) question.

"I think you sleepwalk."

"Wow. That's stupid of me."

"Yes, especially considering that you are probably locked out of Sam's apartment now," Castiel observed.

"Ok, so it's really stupid of me."

"A bit."

Dean whistled, low and soft, "You don't pull punches, do ya?"

Castiel snorted quietly, leaning against his doorframe. "Do you want to sit in my living room until Sam awakens and unlocks the door?"

"That'd awesome."

Castiel sighed as if it were some great inconvenience, even though it wasn't. "Come on, then."

Dean tried to get up, wobbled and slid back down. He grunted, grumbled and tried again, with the same results.

"Do you want help?" Castiel offered.

"No," Dean gritted out before trying twice more to stand.

"Yes," Castiel changed his answer for him, strode over, letting his own door drift shut behind him and grabbed Dean's uninjured shoulder and arm. "You need help, now ask for it nicely."

"No."

Castiel gave him a look, "You're being a disgusting shade of swamp green right now. It's revolting. Now use your manners. I've met your mother, lovely woman that she is. I'm sure she gave you a spoonful of manners along with your morning Cheerios. I'll ask again, do you want help?"

Dean glared at him. It was dark and Castiel couldn't _see _it in the traditional sense, but he knew it was there. "You're being puce again. Puce and swamp are not a pleasant combination," Castiel told him conversationally.

"Fine, help?" Dean muttered, then, catching sight of Castiel's expression, rephrased, "Help, _please._"

Castiel helped him to his feet. They turned, facing the Novak door, only to realize it had fallen shut in Castiel's absence.

"You don't have a key, do you?" Dean muttered.

"No."

"We're both stuck out here, now aren't we?" Dean sighed, resigned.

"Yes."

"Well, damn. It's a good thing I'm a bit whacked on painkillers." He grimaced a bit as a change in position dragged on his shoulder wound, "Or this would be a really uncomfortable experience."

Castiel threw a withering glance his direction. He wasn't sure Dean received it, but making the face made Castiel feel a bit better.

Within a few minutes they were both propped up against the wall, staring at the ceiling and regretting various life choices that led them to be stranded out here in the hallway at two in the morning.

Finally, Dean broke the silence. "So, why do you do it?"

"Do what?" Castiel asked.

"Poke at me, try to make me mad. Every day you've shown up at Sam's place you've tried to start a fight or at least some sort of weird-ass bickering-fest with me. So, what gives, man?"

Castiel sighed, "I'm waiting for you to snap."

"Say what?"

In for a half, in for a whole. "Greif does that, it gets in your head and the injustice of it all just sits and marinates in there until one day, _boom. _Someone gets chewed out over something small and it all snowballs and eventually after the fight things go back to normal, but they're never quite normal afterward. I didn't want you to do that to Sam."

"You were trying to make me freak out at you?"

"Yes. You're surprisingly even-tempered for someone who wears his heart on his metaphorical sleeve," Castiel said wryly.

Dean chuckled, "Sam and Claire are right, you're a pretty good friend."

Castiel snorted, "Oh, everything I've said is true. The excessive tree-imagery in 'Fellowship of the Ring' is ridiculous, the plots of most American crime fiction are trite and AngelFall is a cheap thriller."

"Shut up before these pain meds wear off and I'm pissed enough to hurt you," Dean threatened jovially, "All of those books kick ass and AngelFall rocks. Even if the author did die before writing the last book. Favorite books of all time, right there," he grinned to himself.

Castiel decided it was best not to tell him what he was thinking at that exact moment, it was along the lines of incoherent and seemed to mostly repeat two main ideas: _'how the hell are my books someone's favorites' _and _'thank god I used a pen-name. Emmanuel Grace is a lot less obvious than James or Castiel Novak'. _Instead of voicing these opinions, Castiel just snorted. Dean elbowed him with his good arm.

They sat in the hallway until morning, poking fun at each other like a pair of enemies. Dean went home (when Sam sheepishly bothered to let his sleep-walking brother back in) thinking he was glad he found friends when he back to Orcastle.

**Author's Note: So the Swedish embassy thing, a short explanation. The Swedes hate the Norwegians. Simple cultural fact with way too much history attached to it. The mention of candy fish is a reference to the candy 'Swedish Fish'. **

**The LotR stuff, I share Cas' opinion about 'Fellowship', I much prefer 'Two Towers'…not that any of you actually wanted to know that…**

**Anywho, short author's note today because I am very tired as I write this. See ya next chapter! **

**PLEASE REVIEW! Thanks!**


	7. Chapter 7

**Chapter 6: Who Are You, Dean Winchester?**

**Author's Note: Thank you everyone who reviewed! Those of you with accounts should have received personal messages. Guest, thank you so much for reviewing! I'm glad you're enjoying this story as much as I'm enjoying writing it! **

**Without further ado: chapter 6.**

* * *

A week or so after the night Castiel and Dean were locked out of their apartments; Dean was slowly driving everyone around him slightly insane. It was a natural, organic process, the insanity brewing slowly over the course of several days, coming to a slow simmer for some, a rolling boil for others. One by one every person living in above the storefronts was slowly being pushed closer and closer to the edge of madness by one Dean Winchester.

"He was easier to manage when he was drugged-up and pathetic!" griped Gabriel, throwing his hands in the air in defeat.

"I can hear you, midget," Dean pointed out.

"I mean, seriously, he was like giant, man-shaped kitten for a few weeks. We just had to feed him, water him and make sure he didn't skip out on its medicine. Easy peasy. But _now,_" Gabriel apparently did not feel the need to listen to other people while ranting.

"I can _still hear you_, midget," Dean pointed out again.

"_Now, _it's all 'I'm bored' or 'I'm going to try to do this stupid thing or that stupid thing since Sammy's not around to bully me into not aggravating my freaking _gunshot wound_'. Ugh. I can't take down a giant-ass baby like Dean when he's all determined to be self-destructive!" Gabriel was still griping.

"No, no, you could never take me down, and I will twist you into the world's first human pretzel if you don't shut up at some point," Dean growled.

"I am sure there are other human pretzels on the planet, Dean," Castiel commented, only now bothering to look up from the ledger he was updating.

"_Jamie, _big mean Deanie's _threatening me!" _Gabriel made a strange flailing motion Castiel was sure was meant to be dramatic but just came across as vaguely jelly-fish-like.

"How appallingly orange of him," Castiel mused, only half-serious, a smirk tugging at the corners of his mouth.

"Ugh, you're no help!" sighed Gabriel, "You know what you are, Jamie, you're an enabler. You're enabling him to drive me nuts."

"How many times can I say this without you realizing _that I can still hear you_?" Dean asked incredulously.

"You didn't have to help with this, Gabriel," Castiel reminded his cousin.

"What can I say, I'm a kind-hearted soul," Gabriel plopped into a chair beside his cousin, glowering mildly at the Winchester sprawled across the couch, "So what's the game-plan, then? Watch this guy and stop him from doing something unusually stupid in a fit of 'I'm a Winchester-and-therefore-think-I-am-a-indestructible-god'?"

"Essentially, yes," Castiel said, making a few marks in his ledger. He'd always preferred to keep records for the shop in pen. It somehow seemed purer.

Gabriel snorted, "Great, on baby-sitting duty for the one person on the planet who isn't willing to sit around and wait to heal while being waited on hand and foot."

Castiel, not looking away from his ledger, reached out the hand not occupied with the pen and patted Gabriel's shoulder a few times in an awkward-only-half-paying-attention-to-this sort of comforting manner. "There, there. There, there."

"Since you guys seem to be doing just fine without me, I'm gonna drive to the store and pick up some pie," Dean began to climb off the couch.

Both Castiel and Gabriel's heads snapped up. "SIT DOWN!" they snapped in an impressive display of synchronized thought.

Dean sighed, grumbling mutinous things like "I knew you were listening" and "Damn boring".

"Just go back to your irritating tree imagery and you'll feel much better," Castiel said in his awkwardly reassuring manner.

Dean snorted, "No respect for classics these days," before scooping up the tattered copy of 'Fellowship of the Ring' and settling in to devour it once more.

* * *

The next two weeks crumbled together and puddled on the floor in a pile of tiny, crumb-like incidents.

Dean got bored and tried to cook while Castiel was snoozing in the armchair. That little incident had ended in Dean accidentally splattering thick, goopy cherry pie filling across Castiel's trenchcoat and white shirt. Castiel didn't mind much. The pie filling was a lovely shade of maroon, the perfect color for his most recent painting. Unfortunately, this meant he kept the stain on his coat for as long as possible so he would have reference material when mixing paint. Once dry, maroon slpatter-marks on clothing tend to look a bit like blood, at least to the outside observer. Castiel did not really consider this when he wore the coat to the grocery store that Thursday. The rumor mill spun for weeks on maroon-stained grist.

The next day Dean, still bored with slow recuperation, tried to work on his car. Sam intercepted him on the stairs and threatened to sedate him if he tried to escape again. Dean crawled out a window. Gabriel caught him and sent him right back to Sam's apartment before he even reached the ground.

Dean tried to cook again and accidentally set Sam's shirt on fire.

Dean spent over an hour trying to guess Castiel's password just to get into his laptop.

Dean gave up on cracking Castiel's laptop (but only after confusing it enough to send it into self-imposed lockdown) and instead hacked Gabriel's.

Dean realized that hacking a laptop is no fun once you accomplish it and turned to other options for boredom-relief.

All and all, it was a maddening month for Team Heal Dean.

* * *

"Dean."

"Dean."

"Dean!"

"What, Sammy?"

Sam sighed in irritation, "You can't just ignore me because you're bored and sulky."

"Real men don't sulk. They brood. With dignity."

"What does that say about you then, sulky-pants?" Sam asked.

Dean snorted, "Sulky-pants? Dude, lame insult."

Sam shrugged, "Best I could do with limited resources."

"Yeah, whatever lets you sleep at night, bitch. So, what do you want? I assume there's a reason you're nagging me during your lunch break."

"Shut up, jerk. And I was wondering what your plans were…for you know…after."

"After what, Sammy?"

Oh god, Dean was going to make him spell it out, wasn't he? Why couldn't he just read between the lines and let Sam off the hook? "What are you going to do after you're healed, Dean? You can't just crash on my couch forever."

"Well, from what's been going on the past few weeks; that seems to be where everyone seems to want to keep me."

"Dean, don't make this harder than it has to be," Sam groaned.

"How am I making it hard, Sam?" Dean growled, a dangerous glint sparking in the dark center of his eyes.

"Goddammit, Dean!" Sam snapped, exasperation welling and bubbling and boiling over in a stinging flood, "You have a degree in education, for god's sake! And over a decade in law enforcement! You have education and training and job experience, you've got to have some sort of _plan _for what happens after that shoulder heals. Will you go back to New York? Will you stay in Orcastle? If you stay here where are you going to live? What are you going to do? Do you even _have _a plan?"

"I don't wanna talk about this right now, Sammy," Dean gritted out through clenched teeth.

"A plan, Dean. That's all I want from you, I want to know you have some idea where the hell you're going and what you're going to do when you get there."

"Not right now, Sammy."

"Dean-."

"Sammy. Mind your own damn business."

"But,-."

"SAMMY! _Not right now!" _

Silence dropped down around them, too heavy and too cold and almost wet in its oppressive weight.

"Fine," Sam murmured, "Fine."

"Fine," growled Dean, but Sam could barely hear the venom that had been staining his voice.

Sam left the room, quiet footsteps dropping down and away in every sense of the word as he went back downstairs to his clinic, leaving his half-eaten sandwich behind, not even caring that he had lost his lunch. The rest of his lunch break would be better served doing something for his actual job than fighting with his impossible brother.

* * *

A few painful minutes of movement later, Dean, partially-healed injury and all, was standing in Beehive Books, across the counter from one Castiel Novak. Store traffic was almost dead. Only one or two customers drifted through the stacks.

"Hey, J," Dean said, rapping his knuckles against the fake wood of the counter in a rolling little drumbeat.

Castiel looked up, the new nickname catching his mind's eye. It wasn't really _Castiel's _nickname, just James' initial. But something about it was special, specific to _him. _No one had ever called Jimmy 'J'. 'J' was his; and his alone, the way nothing about him had been since Jimmy died. That independence, that autonomy filled Castiel with a sort of twisted pleasure. But thinking that made Castiel feel like a traitor. He tried not to appreciate the nickname too much.

"Hello, Dean. Wandering again?"

"Uh, something like that."

There was a lull in the conversation. Dean hummed, or at least Castiel thought he might have been. Castiel really didn't see any other reason for the other man to be making a string of nonsense sounds.

"Arylide yellow." Castiel sliced through the noisy silence with a few words, cutting a tidy incision in the atmosphere and leaving it open to be filled as the universe saw fit.

Dean snorted, used to the sudden appearance of colors in conversation. "Am I being ari-, arl-, ugh, whatever that fancy yellow was?"

"Hmm, it's more the color of the situation."

"It's not a pretty yellow, is it?"

"I do not like it."

"Anything like Gabe's brand of yellow?"

Castiel chuckled, shaking his head at Dean's ignorance, "No, Gabriel is a true, bright yellow. Pure. Aggravating, but in pure in its intents and identity."

"Sounds easy."

"It can seem easy, being yellow."

Dean chuckled, "But it's not easy being green."

There was an awkward pause.

"I do not understand that reference," Castiel blinked, confusion puddling in his mind and leaking out his lips.

"Never mind, J."

Another pause. But this time Dean broke it before Castiel could make any more observations on its color scheme. "I did that thing you were talking about."

"Yes?"

"I yelled at Sammy. Poor kid's just trying to help and I'm just being, well, me. It's just, ugh, fucking lonely, you know?"

An older lady gave Dean a reproachful look as she shouldered he way past him to pay for her book. Castiel heard her hiss, "Language, young man. Really. This is a _nice _shop."

"Attention all personal problems of Dean Winchester, you are all temporarily suspended without pay until further notice. Frankly, you're disturbing the townspeople, and the Management just can't have that, now can we?" Castiel dryly countered the woman's jab. Dean looked like he might have a fit resisting the urge to laugh and the older lady was giving Castiel a suspicious look. But her _look _was tempered with a heavy dose of reluctantly twinkling eyes and an indulgent smile trying to creep along the edges of her thin lips. She took her book and her change and hustled out the door.

"Are my 'personal problems' off suspension now?" Dean asked wryly.

"For now," Castiel made sure to smile enigmatically.

Dean sighed. "I don't even know where I was going with that little stupid-ass rant. Just, you were right, grief screws with your head and I'm taking it out on Sammy now and that's not fair. All he was doing was asking what I was going to do next. And I just plain don't know. I'm stuck, J."

Castiel breathed out, one slow huff, his mind slipping back to the first few months without Jimmy. "You were close to your uncle." Castiel did not ask the question so much as state a fact.

"Yeah…and no. Y'know? It's one of those things."

_One of those things. _Once upon a time Castiel would have killed for a family in which 'one of those things' didn't mean loving your brothers despite all the time they spent trying to destroy each other, not caring that you could be collateral damage. But Castiel did not want to bring his brothers into this. "Family. So many shades of grey."

Dean blinked, looked mildly nauseated, and said, "Please, dear god, tell be that you didn't just reference _that book_ in conjunction to _family._"

Castiel blinked, feeling miffed that Dean would even think such a thing. "No, how appallingly bisque of you to think so."

"Just checking, man, you do own a bookstore."

"Dean, stop trying to offend me. You don't actually want to fight with me and your efforts are irritating."

There was a pause. Castiel grabbed a box of books and slipped out from behind the counter. Dean trailed after him as the smaller man began systematically shelving the volumes. They continued like this for several minutes, the dusty quiet only disturbed by the thunk-shh of books being returned to their shelf homes.

"I know I don't want to fight you, J," Dean said, voice quiet in the emptiness of the store.

Castiel chose not to respond, he could feel more words trying to escape from Dean.

"But I want to fight _someone. _ I want to tear and punch and kick and break and…maybe not someone. Something. Yeah, I want to fight something. And I want to win. I want to fucking win for once." The words rushed out of Dean like prisoners through an unlocked door. He stared at the space above Castiel's head the entire time, but Castiel could feel the words hitting him anyway, twisting their way into his heart and mind like corkscrews.

"I understand." Two words were all Castiel had to offer. Two tiny words trying to stand in an onslaught of borrowed trauma and suppressed memory.

"I'm so screwed up," Dean murmured, voice rising slightly on the end, as if he were surprised at the depth of his screwed-up-ed-ness.

"We all are, Dean," Castiel told him.

Dean snorted, "You're not gonna tell me some shit about how 'it's all going to be ok'?

Castiel shrugged, "I could tell you anything. A whole rainbow of words. But that's not what you really want any more than you actually want to beat the shit out of someone."

Dean grunted in wonder, "How do you do it?"

"What?"

"Be you. And do it so well."

Castiel felt a laugh crawling up his throat, trying to strangle him with demented, broken hilarity. It scratched at his esophagus, clawing at his flesh and tearing at his soul. When it finally wheezed out his lips it was nothing but a dry cough, just as dry as the silky, second-hand pages of the books he was returning to their shelves. "Oh, Dean. You are so amber."

"Um, I thought I was baring my soul here or something and you're talking about…amber?" Dean sounded a little irritated and confused, as if he wasn't quite sure what to be upset about.

Castiel smiled, a small internal little gesture. "Don't worry about it, Dean."

"Uh, sure, dude. I'll do that."

There was a small almost-silence as Castiel continued to shelve. Suddenly another arm joined him, a book grasped in foreign fingers. The bookseller turned his head, surprised to spot Dean shelving books with his good arm. "What?" Dean said, almost-but-not-quite belligerently, as if challenging Castiel to tell him off for helping.

Castiel snorted, "See, amber."

Dean snorted right back, shaking his head.

Quiet shelving eventually gave way to Dean asking a question, the same one Sam had pestered him with earlier. The one that had been eating away at the bottom of his stomach for weeks, driving him to fidget and fiddle and generally drive his keepers to the brink of insanity. "What am I supposed to do now?" Dean asked, rubbing the back of his head.

Castiel stopped and turned his gaze back onto his new neighbor, and asked the question that had, unbeknownst to any other living creature, set him on the path he now tread. "Who are you, Dean Winchester?"

"What?" Dean sounded surprised.

"Who are you, Dean Winchester? Figure it out, and you'll know what to do next."

"Damn, J, did you have to get deep about this?"

Castiel laughed dryly, "Go apologize to your brother for being an assbutt and get to figuring it out."

"Assbutt?"

"Don't judge me."

Dean laughed at him, voice sounding a little less broken and lonely now. He left, going next door to talk to Sam.

Castiel sighed into the empty store, thinking back on his own question and his own answer eight years.

_Who are you, Castiel Emmanuel Novak? _

_ I am all Claire and I have. _

And here he was.

* * *

"I give up!" Claire cried a few days later, dramatically flinging aside her history textbooks and flopping back onto the armchair, "History is boring and I'll never remember all this crap!"

"Hey, don't knock history, blondie," Dean warned from where he was laid up on the couch, "History kicks ass."

Claire eyed him with narrowed eyes. "Prove it."

Dean narrowed his eyes right back, "Challenge accepted, short stuff."

"Okay."

"Time period."

"Civil war."

"Okay, what battle?"

"Gettysburg."

"Ok, get the salt shakers, they're the artillery. That pencil's the battle line. How many erasers do you have?"

"A lot."

"Okay, they're our Calvary."

* * *

Meanwhile, downstairs at the bookstore, Castiel was besieged. It was a well-established fact that the Orcastle Ladies' Literary Society was a force of nature greater in strength and might than your average natural disaster. It was also an established fact that the Orcastle Ladies' Literary Society met every month, come rain or shine, at Beehive Books. Usually, Castiel was prepared for this… event. He marked it on his calendar, he readied himself for the sudden onslaught of mothering . But with everything that had been going on recently, it had completely slipped his mind until he was locking up the store at five.

At first he assumed that it was just another unexpected visit from Mary Winchester. She had been coming by to visit and help with Dean over the past few weeks, often armed with pie.

"Hello, Jamie," Mrs. Winchester smiled warmly, cheeks flushed and hair ruffled from the nippy fall breeze.

"Hello, Mary. Dean is upstairs, in Sam's apartment, as usual."

"Thank you, Jamie, but Dean's not why I'm here."

Castiel blinked at her, perplexed.

"The book club…?"she prompted.

Castiel blinked again, still perplexed.

"Oh, did you forget?'

Castiel blinked one more time. "Perhaps…" he hedged.

"Forget, boy?" another female voice behind him made Castiel twitch and whip around. Ellen Harvelle shook her head at him, "Good lord, you'd forget to feed yourself if you didn't keep a checklist."

"I am a fully functioning adult, Ellen," Castiel reminded her, smiling at the old joke between the two of them.

The auburn-haired woman reached up and ruffled his hair, "Well, you certainly didn't remember to run a brush through this mop."

"And you didn't remember to keep your promise to ask Bobby Singer out before the next book club meeting," a third voice chimed in.

"Lisa Hendrickson, I will ask that man out when I am good and ready to," Ellen grumped at her.

"Well, if you don't, I will," Pamela Barnes (where had _she _come from?! Castiel wondered, these women were freaking ninjas!) teased.

"Uh-huh, as soon as you're done dredging up the courage to go after Benny Lafitte. How long have you had that little crush, huh Pam?" Jody elbowed her friend. (Castiel had given up on trying to spot the women before they appeared. They were just too good at sneaking around).

He sighed, listening to the women of Orcastle banter, the conversation turning from Pamela and Ellen's (semi-non-existent) love lives to Lisa and her husband Victor's vow-renewal that December.

"Are you taking Ben on the trip?" Jody asked.

"Well, we were talking about it, and we really want Ben to be part of the ceremony. Even Ben says that Vic's like his dad, and we're going to Hawaii, how can we not take him? Hawaii is like thirteen-year-old boy heaven."

Ellen snorted out a laugh, "I'm pretty sure that Hawaii is anyone's idea of heaven, sweetie."

"Do you want me to unlock the door or are you going to stand on my doorstep being cyan and talking about your children, husbands, and men you've been pining after for years?" Castiel sighed.

Mary smiled gently, "Are you trying to go home, Jamie?"

"A little bit," he admitted.

"Then just leave us in the shop, we don't need to be supervised," the reliability of Pamela's words was called into serious question after the heavily flirtatious wink she aimed at Castiel. He didn't take it personally. She flirted with everyone she wasn't seriously interested in. Case in point, her months of awkward fumbling with Benny Lafitte, the charming owner of the local Cajun restaurant.

Castiel rubbed his temples. It had been a busy day. He had told Sam that he would check on Dean that afternoon, but the recent release of the first book in the _Chronicles of Moondor _sequel series (which Castiel may or may not have read all in one sitting the night before during a particularly bad bout of insomnia) had brought an unexpected rush of customers, drowning Castiel in a sea of work with no land in sight until official Tuesday closing time (five o'clock). Dean had gone un-checked-on and Claire was left to her own devices with her homework.

A soft touch on his arm temporarily distracted him from his stress. Mary Winchester smiled at him, "Why don't we girls meet up in Sam's apartment? I wanted to check on Dean, anyway. You can go get some sleep; you look like death warmed over."

Castiel gave her a wry smile, "As usual, your compliments leave me breathless, Mrs. Winchester."

"Charming as ever, Mr. Novak," Mary gave his arm a maternal pat. "Come on, girls, we're invading Sam's place for today."

Castiel hoped his sigh of relief wasn't too obvious.

* * *

Conversation was lively as the women of Orcastle made their way up the stairs to Sam's apartment above the clinic.

"Ugh, I'm stuck, I swear to whatever the hell you want me to, this damn substitute teacher is going to make me kill something," Ellen grumbled.

"She can't be that bad…" Lisa said.

"Is she the one that made Bess Fitzgerald _cry _the other day?" Pamela demanded indignantly, "Because Garth was talking about it at the radio station the other day; he did not take kindly to someone harassing his wife."

"Bess' the orchestra director, right?" Jody clarified.

"Yeah," Ellen groaned, "And this damn substitute history teacher is apparently terrorizing the poor thing. You know what the students call the sub? Hell-bitch. Yeah. I'm waiting for them to go after the woman with sporks, it's that bad."

"Still can't find a history teacher, huh?" Mary said.

"No! And Ruby has got to go; she's the worst sub we've ever had." Ellen rubbed her face, "Being principal is supposed to be easier than teaching. That's a big fat lie if I've ever heard one. High-schoolers are easy to manage. Their instructors are the nightmare."

A supportive murmur rose from the women as they came to a halt outside Sam's door. Mary turned the knob, knowing it would be unlocked, and slid it open, peering around the edge. She stepped straight into the Battle of Gettysburg.

* * *

"Ok, and what happened next?" Claire demanded.

"You tell me, blondie," Dean prompted, green eyes alive with the contagious energy of the battle they were reenacting across the coffee table.

Claire chewed her lip, "Oh! And then the salt shakers launched a final volley-."

Dean made the appropriate sound effects, squashing some of the crumpled-notebook-paper infantry. Claire cheered, clapping.

"And then what did-." Dean began to ask when Ellen's voice cut through the commotion of Gettysburg, dragging them back to Orcastle.

"You're hired!"

"What?" was, of the course the extremely intelligent thing to drop out of Dean's mouth.

"This is not optional, Winchester. You're my new history teacher. If you can do the Battle of Gettysburg with erasers and salt-shakers, you can teach high schoolers."

"Doesn't this have to go through the school board or something…?"

"Pssh, they're not going to care," Pamela asserted.

"I do what I want," Ellen declared, folding her arms across her chest. "And I want you to replace the Hell-Bitch."

"I feel like I'm missing something here…" Dean began, before Lisa cut him off.

"Don't screw this up, Dean. You've been my friend since we were toddlers, and I'm asking you very nicely not to screw this up for yourself or I'll send my big, scary FBI agent husband to beat you up," Lisa chastised, a smile twinkling in her eyes.

Dean snorted, "Yeah, yeah, Lis, brotherhood of men, Victor's not roughing me up."

"Victor's whipped, and you're joining my staff, Winchester," Ellen declared.

"Take the job, you're making a periwinkle racket in my hallway, I do have to live here, you know," a familiar bookseller's voice grouched from behind the wall of women.

"Hey, J."

"Hello, Dean. Answer the damn question already and take the job, I have a migraine and you people are loud."

_Who are you, Dean Winchester? _

_ Apparently an educator, who knew? _

It was a start.

**Author's Note: Hi, guys! So Dean's officially moving to Orcastle, he has a job and everything. And Castiel's being a good friend, in his own cryptic way (he's secretly a sweetie, everyone knows it). And the Ladies' Literary Society…well, they were fun and funny to write, they might pop up a few more times. A brief word about Lisa, she and Dean are JUST FRIENDS in this fic. THAT'S IT. So please no Lisa-hate. **

**Sorry for how little Gabe and Sam appeared in this chapter, the next chapter will be all about Halloween so obviously the Trickster and Sammy will be big parts of that. :)**

**And with that, I leave you chapter 6. Please review, I love hearing from you all! **

**See ya next chapter!**


	8. Chapter 8

**Chapter 7: This is Halloween **

**A few weeks later…**

"I swear to god, Mr. Winchester is trying to kill me. I'm dying. Dead. Here I am, a high-achieving corpse. I'll just lie here and decorate this countertop for the rest of time. An empty shrine to the false gods of Advanced Placement," Kevin Tran, high school student, may have continued along this vein for quite some time if he hadn't suddenly found his hair full of bright orange pastry cream.

"Ack! What the-! GABRIEL!" Kevin flailed unproductively, trying to dislodge the creamy orange froth trickling into his eyes.

"TRICK OR TREAT!" Gabriel howled with laughter, watching as Kevin leapt away from the display counter, pawing at the cream in his face.

"Pleh-." Kevin spat out a bit of orange fluff, "What was THAT?!"

"Halloween preparations, dear boy!" Gabriel sing-songed, twirling a lollipop as he eyed his young employee appraisingly. "The world's greatest holiday is a mere week away and you had the audacity to gripe about your _history teacher. _Feh, _history. BORING._ New rule: no talking about boring things in this shop. Not a single ounce of boring shall be permitted to cross this hallowed threshold!"

The bell atop the shop door chimed as James Novak slid in out of the cold, trench coat billowing behind him.

"No, no, no! Jamie, get your boring little butt out of here, I've just instituted a new rule and everything!" Gabriel declared.

James cocked his head to the side and regarded Gabriel with his piercing blue eyes. Kevin always thought being looked at by James Novak was a lot like being x-rayed. Radiation included.

"I refuse to comply to your appallingly monochromatic standards," James declared.

Gabriel snorted, "Fine, social rebellion makes you interesting enough to stay, but you are walking a very thin line, mister," he declared, whipping up a decisive pointer finger.

"Good to know," James murmured abstractly, "Is it almost Halloween or are you decorating interns again?"

"Both…?" Gabriel's response was more of a question than an answer.

James snorted, "Orange is a terrible color for that boy. Focus on cooler shades."

"Ay, ay, captain," Gabriel said ironically, with a flourishy little bow "I bow to your superior knowledge of art and design."

James nodded sagely, "As well you should." Kevin had no idea if he was joking or not. The thought was rather unsettling either way.

"Is there a point to this or are you just going to pick on me?" Kevin demanded irritably.

"Picking on you," both said at once, Gabriel with a chipper smile and James with a slightly perplexed look on his face as if he couldn't imagine what might make Kevin think he _needed _any other reason to be here.

"Great," Kevin threw up his hands (now sticky with dripping orange pastry cream) in defeat, "First my psycho new history teacher, now the two of you. I'll be dead by spring."

"Apparently Dean-o is Kev-Kev's history teacher!" Gabriel informed James as he whipped out a pan of chocolate cupcakes and began to deftly fill them with the orange pastry cream not currently sliding down Kevin's face.

"And he's trying to kill me."

James looked unsympathetic. "I assure you, no high school students have suffered death-by-battle-reenactment to date."

"It's not just the reenacting (although, for the record, using dodge-balls as artillery _hurts_) it's all the _work. _We're building a life-sized catapult replica. _Life-sized. Catapult._ Do you have any idea how hard it is to find specs for an ancient catapult?"

"How whimsically carnelian. Sounds like fun," was James' only comment on Kevin's suffering.

Kevin responded by face-planting into his textbooks again, yelping and leaping back as he realized the orange cream in his hair had transferred onto a timeline on page 336.

As Gabriel's favorite (not that he needed to know it) intern flailed about trying to salvage his homework, the baker turned to his favorite (and the little bugger knew it) cousin. "What can I do for you, Jimbo? You can't have come in here just to poke at little Kevie."

"Ah, yes, I did have a reason for being here," James hedged, gaze drifting off the way it often did, as if he were trying to find the answers somewhere in the middle distance, far away from the here and now. The problem was, Gabriel never seemed to know what the questions James was seeking answers for actually _were. _

"Hellooo, earth to Jamie, do you copy? Do you read, Mr. Spock?" Gabriel twisted his voice into a close approximation of an old, crackly, radio.

"Yes. Although I am not sure exactly what you want me to copy," James said archly.

"Aaand, we're back," Gabrial teased, secretly relieved that his cousin had drifted back down to earth.

"Celadon blue nonsense aside, I did have a question. Is the bakery still doing the sugar skulls for Dia De Los Muertos?"

"Yeah, sure. We do everything for Halloween or October-November holidays. It's the candy holiday of the year, why the hell not?"

"Good," James nodded once, then turned, trenchcoat fanning out behind him, moving as if to leave, "That will be all," he declared as he swept out the door.

Gabriel snorted, "And a Happy Halloween to you too, weirdo," he muttered fondly.

"Is it just me or did he seem weirder than normal?" Kevin, who now had a sheet of graph paper stuck to his pastry-creamed hair, asked.

"Hmm," Gabriel hummed thoughtfully to himself, breaking it off suddenly and chucking a cupcake at Kevin, "Think fast!"

Kevin yelped and just barely managed to catch it.

Gabriel shook his head and tsked in the back of his throat. "With reflexes like that you'll never survive Battle-History."

Kevin narrowed his eyes irritably at him and took a big bite out of the cupcake just to spite Gabriel.

The older man laughed, long and hard. "That's the spirit of Halloween, right there!"

…

Claire looked up to see Castiel, trenchcoated as always, sweep into the bookshop. "Hey, dad," she greeted him, reminding him in their little code that she had friends over.

"Hi Mr. Novak," Ben Braedon (although often people called him Ben Hendrickson after his stepfather) called politely.

"Wassup, James?" Krissy, Claire's best friend since first grade (even then she hadn't bothered to call Castiel 'Mr. Novak') gave an ironic little salute from where she had propped her feet up on the table strewn with the teens' textbooks. Claire watched, suppressing the urge to giggle as Castiel smoothly removed Krissy's combat boots from the polished wood surface as he glided past.

"Hello, children. Having a ceil day, are you?"

Ben tossed an inquisitive look in Claire's direction. "It's a type of blue," she quietly whispered to him. Not quietly enough, apparently. For a man who was as tone-deaf as they came, if a butterfly flapped its wings across the room, Castiel would hear it.

"What do they teach you lot these days?" he asked, head tipped slightly to the side, looking curious and disappointed in the art requirements of the Orcastle School District.

"Sobre la celebración de Día de los Muertos en México y Sudamérica," Krissy groaned, dropping her book on her face and moving to put her feet back on the table. Castiel blocked their path with a box of books. She lifted the textbook from her face and narrowed her eyes at him. He gave her a tiny, wry smirk. Two points adults, none teenage invaders.

"Yes, I asked Gabriel and he said that he was making sugar skulls for Halloween. I'll take some after they're finished."

"You know, you could pay for them like a normal person," Claire teased.

"Or I could stay interesting," Castiel raised his eyebrows, slipping his reading glasses onto his face as he slid behind the front desk.

"Always an option," Claire grinned and warmth filled her chest when her uncle grinned back. All this 'Day of the Dead' celebration nonsense in Spanish class seemed to be getting him down.

"Okay, so we've got sugar-skulls, that takes care of the food part of the project," Ben began strategizing, "What's next?"

"I've got history," Krissy sounded less than enthused.

"Are you sure?" Claire knew how much her friend hated the tedious bookish parts of projects, and life in general.

"Psh, yeah. I've got this, I'll throw together a kickass powerpoint, they'll never know it was last-minute."

"You fill us with confidence," Claire said dryly. Ben snorted with laughter in the background.

"Hey, have I ever let you down?"

"No," they chorused wryly.

"Then follow your commander, troops," Krissy teased smugly.

"Ay, ay, captain," Claire and Ben saluted ironically, Ben catching Claire's eyes and pulling a face. She giggled and that was it, all three dissolved into hilarity. Claire thought she might have caught the sound of Castiel chuckling quietly somewhere in the depths of the shop.

Eventually the trio sobered and refocused. "Okay, so all that's left is that altar-thing."

Claire sighed, "I guess I'll do it, since Ben's already doing the folklore."

"Like it would be fair letting _you _do the folklore," Krissy elbowed Claire gently, "You _live _in a bookstore full of weird old books. It'd take you like five seconds to finish it."

Claire elbowed Krissy back, "Fine, fine, I'll actually put forth _effort._" She rolled her eyes comically, "But you had better pay me in cookies."

"Do I look like a girl scout?" Krissy squeaked.

"Don't lie Kris, we all know about Brownies," Ben grinned wickedly.

"And Juniors!" Claire chimed in.

"And what the hell comes after Juniors, cuz I'm pretty sure you're still going to troop meetings…" Ben trailed off with a smug grin.

"Fine, I'm a girl scout! But I'm only in it for the cookies!"

_"Sure,_" Ben and Claire stretched out the word as long as possible.

"Shut up, both of you!"

…

Castiel was content to work in silence and just absorb the cheery sounds of teenage life in the middle of the store. Hours passed, hours in which little homework but a lot of fun was accomplished. It made Castiel think of when he and Jimmy were ten and the time they were living at Uncle Chuck and Aunt Becky's house. That had been a good time, a pure time. A time when they were free of the insanity that was their real home and could pretend that they were Gabriel's brothers instead of Lucifer, Raphael, and Zachariah's. A time when they could pretend that their father was around and their mother wasn't…whatever the hell she was. It had been a good time, a good world, those few sun-drenched months. But as life had taught Castiel, most good things came to an end. And that time, like everything else, ended.

Castiel was determined that Claire's sun-drenched time would not end like his did. She would have the life he and her father had never had. It didn't matter what it took.

Castiel was so absorbed in his own meandering thoughts he barely registered when Krissy and Ben's parents came to pick them up. Krissy's boisterous, "See ya!" and Ben's polite, "Bye Mr. Novak" slipped through his awareness like shining fish in a dark pond. But at five o'clock sharp the bell jangled discordantly as the eighth graders left for home and Claire flipped the sign from 'OPEN' to 'CLOSED'.

Castiel might have drifted along in a fog of thought and memory if two things did not happen to shock him out of his reverie and dump him sharply back into reality. The first was Claire hopping up to sit on the counter, staring out at the store and saying, ever-so-non-chalantly: "So, is my mother dead or just MIA?"

The second thing was the bell (Castiel really, really hated that damn thing) jangling one more time as Dean Winchester shouldered his way into the store. "Hey, J-."

…

Dean was not expecting to open 'Beehive Books' door to _that _conversation. Admittedly, he and Sam had both speculated on where she was/what had happened to Claire's mother. But they had never really tried to find out. They could have asked Gabriel, they could have asked Claire or J themselves. Hell, they probably could have _googled _James Novak and found everything they needed. But they didn't. Because they knew what it was to lose a parent, and really it wasn't any of their business. And if Winchesters knew anything, it was to stay out of other families' business.

So Dean really wasn't expected this particular festival of awkward when he stepped into the store, leading with his customary "Hey, J" only to hear Claire say: "So, is my mother dead or just MIA?".

Any other words Dean might have spoken died on his lips, crumbling and fluttering away like so many dried leaves. There was a moment of silence as the three people in the room regarded each other, gazes measured, attitudes ranging from completely relaxed to excessively tense.

"I can leave…" Dean mentioned, feeling like this possibility needed to be mentioned before this got any more awkward.

"No, it's fine," J assured him, blue eyes looking even more tired than usual.

Dean shifted uncomfortably.

"Sit," J commanded, not even looking at Dean, but apparently sensing the tension, "If you get any tenser, you will hurt yourself. And what would Sam say to that," a dry glance in Dean's direction out of the corner of a blue eye.

At a loss for what else to do, Dean sat in the nearest chair.

J redirected his attention to Claire. "You mother is not dead, although I am hardly the first person anyone would call should that come to pass. I'm sure she's off being unpleasantly neon around equally unpleasantly neon people somewhere far away."

"Okay. So I can't use her for this altar thing for Day of the Dead?"

"Not to my knowledge, no."

Claire huffed a sigh. "I wonder where she is, what she's doing."

Dean stood up, "You know what, if this is going to turn into some sort of deep, family-bonding moment, I'll just leave and come back later, that's completely _fine. _I don't mind."

"Sit back down, Dean," J told him, tone the same as that of a teacher addressing a particularly exasperating, yet endearing student.

Dean sat back down.

"Don't worry about her, Claire," J told her, eyes serious as they stared into hers, "She's not worth it. Put more interesting things in your brain, your brain cells will thank you."

"You are such an indigo person," Claire mused.

J laughed, "Am I? Good, I've been working on that." He turned his attention away from Claire, back to Dean. "Mr. Winchester, you're next. You look like a terrible, bilious yellow sitting there. It's dreadful. Please change the subject immediately."

"Is that an insult…?" Dean asked, perplexed.

"Take it as you will," J offered cryptically.

Dean shook his head, "Whatever, man. I _was _sent on behalf of Sammy, to invite you guys to this Halloween-party/lets-give-candy-to-tricker-treaters-and-dress-up-because-we-obviously-aren't-responsible-adults thing he's throwing."

"That sounds like fun!" Claire encouraged J, who was obviously on the fence, "Come on, you never have any fun with real people!"

J gave her one of his slow, laser-eyed stares.

"Customers are dollar signs, not real people," Claire informed him, " And books don't count either. Go, dress up, hang out with the grown-ups and get interesting!"

"I am perfectly interesting. I am _fascinating." _

"Go be fascinating with Dean and Sam and Uncle Gabe!" Claire protested.

"Dude, it's not a big deal, we're just drinking beer and handing out candy and wearing stupid costumes so we can reminisce about when we were cool enough to pull off 'Spiderman' and cash in on trick-or-treating. You should come. Also, fair warning, Gabriel threatened to kidnap you if you didn't show up. So come or wake up in an abandoned warehouse somewhere, listening to Gabe call for your ransom."

J gave a gentle sigh so infused with long-suffering world-weariness Dean was sure it had a physical presence on some plain of reality. "Very well, I will come."

Dean almost hugged him. He didn't cuz that would be weird and Dean was not the hugging type. But it was a close thing. Obviously all this little-kid-esque Halloween spirit was getting to him. Instead he clapped J on the shoulder and gave him a gruff, "See you there."

J muttered something that sounded suspiciously like more color-coded grumbling but Dean elected to ignore it. The taller man ruffled the bookstore owner's untidy dark hair, "Admit it, you're excited."

The next bout of grumbling was wordless but just as disgruntled. Like a peevish cat, J shrugged off Dean's hand and stepped away, gathering his personal possessions for the trek up the rickety stairs back to the apartments above the storefronts. Dean and Claire exchanged an amused smirk and trailed after him.

"You two are conspiring, I can sense it," J informed them, not bothering to look back.

"Of course we are," Claire replied easily, "How else am I going to eventually overthrow you?"

J snorted and Dean caught sight of the barest hint of a smile curling across the other man's face.

"I suppose you and Sam will be using my kitchen again?" J asked.

The sudden change in topic momentarily threw Dean, but he recovered with grace, "Yeah, I guess. Neither of our places have full kitchens. Thank you, sadistic architects."

"It's hardly my fault that the apartment next door to Sam's was split off from the original without retaining a fully functioning kitchen. Or that you chose to move into it."

Dean shrugged, "It was cheap. And I can always steal your kitchen. It's not like you're not getting anything out of it."

Claire interjected before J could speak, "On behalf of all members of the Novak family, I formally thank you, Dean Winchester, for releasing us for the cruel torment of my father's cooking. This way we won't all die of food poisoning before spring."

"We were perfectly fine for years," J huffed.

Claire sighed, speaking out of the corner of her mouth to Dean, "Let's just say his cooking involves a bit too much experimenting and a little less _becoming edible. _There are such things as cooks who are _too _creative."

Dean and Claire's teasing laughter drowned out J's indignant response.

…

Halloween dawned, a crisp, chill Sunday. The sort of day that began with sharp light and dissolved into thick, velvet twilight which was inevitably consumed by the hungry darkness of night. Children whined about having to go to bed early for school the next day. Kevin Tran stressed about finishing the catapult project by Monday. Gabriel was on a sugar high by nine am. Dean graded papers and wondered how his students were doing with their catapults. Sam bought some last minute candy and managed to get in a surprisingly heated argument with the automated check-out machine at the grocery store. Sam did not win the argument. But he kicked the machine's ass as kick-boxing.

Castiel had been awake since two am. He looked it, but people were so used to his harried, distracted, look-at-me-I'm stressed appearance by now that the dark circles beneath his blue eyes barely registered with the general populace. Gabriel treated the problem with an extra syrupy macchiato. Castiel left it on Dean's doorstep with a note.

_I don't want this. Drink it for me so Gabriel won't get his feelings hurt. _

Dean did not appreciate the gift. But he did appreciate the opportunity it presented. Gently removing the original note, Dean wrote one of his own and dropped the frou-frou almost-coffee off on Sam's doorstep. The new note read like this:

_If you step in this, I win. _

_ Happy Halloween._

_-Your Favorite Brother (don't tell Adam I said that) _

Sam didn't step in it, but it was a very close thing. Irritated, he picked it up, glared at it a bit, put it back down, contemplated what to do with it, and picked it up again. Finally, Sam decided that it was Halloween and he was allowed to sink to Dean's level. Just this once. He wrote a new note and dropped the coffee off on the Novak doorstep. Castiel opened his door to get the newspaper and found the wandering macchiato waiting for him. With a note attached.

_If you see my brother, dump this on his head. _

_Or something. _

_Happy Halloween. _

_- Sam, The Better Winchester_

Amused, Castiel drew a face on the cup and dropped it off on Dean's doorstep one more time. There was no note, just a cartoon frowny face. Dean felt mildy guilty when he opened the door to see the cup sitting there, looking sad and lonely.

The cup made a few more journeys through the building that day. The most memorable being when Sam and Claire, in a fit of mischievousness, left the frowny-face cup sitting atop Kevin's open textbooks in the back room of the bakery while the high schooler was working the front counter. Claire recorded Kevin's shriek on her phone for later teasing.

Gabriel eventually confiscated the cup when it was left in the bakery for too long, but everyone knew that it would eventually resurface. Gabriel had _plans _for the traveling cup.

Halloween was almost a relaxed, frivolous sort of day. Almost. Except for right now, when Castiel and Claire sat shoulder-to-shoulder in their living room, photographs spread out all around them like ripples in a pond.

"I don't know what to do for this altar thing," Claire sighed, "It's supposed to reflect the spirit of the holiday, but also have some sort of personal touch." She dropped her chin to her fist, elbow propped up on her knee, "Day of the Dead is supposed to be a celebration of the lives of our dead relatives and a day to honor their memories. The altar's supposed to have pictures of the dead and things they liked and some other, traditional stuff."

Castiel said nothing, Claire could see his thoughts sliding beneath the still surface of his eyes. She kept talking, not knowing what else to do. "We've got the flowers and sugar skulls and candles and other traditional stuff. Krissy gave me a picture of her dead dog and Ben had a photo of his great-grandfather. But what do I put on here?" she sighed, small shoulders rolling beneath her t-shirt, "I was kind of hoping you could tell me my mother was dead, so I could use her."

Castiel didn't say anything, but he looked at her. Really _looked _at her, with those huge ice-blue eyes that knew everything in a single glance and Claire felt a surge of guilt. She sighed, "I know it's wrong of me to hope for that, but… I don't remember her. And she _left me,_ and there's no real _feeling _attached to her memory. It was different when I was little and was still waiting for her to come back, but now? Nah. I'd rather she was dead so I could put up her photo and forget about her instead of still having this tiny, stupid hope that eventually she'll figure out she still wants me and comes back. Even though I know she never will. How horrible is that?" Claire shuddered. "Am I a bad person?" she asked; voice quiet and small.

Castiel gently put an arm around her shoulders. "No. You will never be a bad person, Claire. You don't know how."

Claire leaned into his shoulder a little bit. She felt the rumble of words brewing in his chest before he spoke them.

"My mother has been in a mental hospital for over a decade. I understand what you mean by wanting it to end so you can finally forget."

Claire nodded, her hair scratching faintly against the cloth of his ratty hoody. Today was one of the few days of the week her uncle didn't wear dress clothes. The hoody was one of the ones he would wear when he was painting. Claire could smell the silky oils and tangy paint thinner that had soaked into the thick cloth over the years. It was comforting.

"I know," she replied to his statement, "I guess I didn't think about it that way." It was true, Claire never really gave her crazy grandmother much thought. She had always known about the woman, that she was in a mental hospital. That she was unlikely to ever come out. But it had never really seemed important or even current to Claire. The only family that had really mattered to the girl over the past eight years had been Castiel and Gabe. And that was all she had really needed.

Castiel gave her arm a gentle squeeze before withdrawing his. "You shouldn't have to, princess. Now, about this altar."

They put everything together. The flowers (fake), the candles (battery-powered, apparently fire hazards were a big no-no in the public school system), Claire's friends' photos and the sugar skulls. Finally Claire rocked back on her heels and eyed her masterpiece. "Good enough. I guess I won't have anyone on there-."

Castiel cut her off. He had wandered away into his office sometime while she had been immersed in the world of Spanish-project-creation. He managed to slip through her awareness until he was standing beside her and she was actively wondering how the heck he had gotten there. Castiel did not speak, his face was even more distant and slightly distracted than usual, but his movements were sure and steady. He reached out to the altar and gently placed a single photo beside those of Ben's great-grandfather and Krissy's beloved dog. Claire leaned forward, drawn in and held by the lure of the mysterious photo. Castiel lifted his hand, freeing the slice of photo paper to rest against the same plastic candle the other two occupied.

It was a candid shot of two young men, one in a University sweatshirt and the other in a familiar (though significantly newer when the picture was taken) trenchcoat. A huge fountain frothed in the background, the sweatshirt-wearing man had jumped up on the lip of the fountain and was striking some sort of pose. The trenchcoated one was slightly turned away, grinning with subtle wickedness as he offhandedly pushed the other into the water. Sunlight dappled identical heads of dark hair, catching on matching blue eyes, refracting sapphire hues. Two men, both alike in everything, in fair university where we lay our scene. The parody of the famous _Romeo and Juliet _opening line flashed through Claire's head as she stared at the picture.

As always, she could instantly tell them apart. And she didn't even need the trenchcoat to identify Castiel.

"Hi, Dad," she murmured to the younger version of Jimmy, watching that frozen second where he balanced on the fountain's edge.

Castiel briefly rested a hand on her head before turning away. "The Novak family should be represented, don't you think?" he said, already walking down the hall.

"Yeah," Claire grinned softly.

…

"Not funny, Dean," Sam grumbled as his brother shoved devil horns on his head.

"Oh, come on, it's hilarious."

"Dean."

"Fun fact: a bunch of historians think Jack the Ripper was a doctor."

"_Dean._"

"Mild-mannered doc by day, killer by night!"

"Dean, for the last time, I did not sell my soul to pay for med school. That joke so old, I think it has grandchildren."

Dean snorted, satisfied that Sam was not going to manage to dislodge the devil horns, and backed away, admiring his handiwork. "The suit weirdly matches, bro," he said.

Sam rolled his eyes and threw Dean a bitch-face. "I was not _planning _on a demonic Halloween."

"No, no you weren't if that all-white atrocity is any evidence," a new voice assessed from the doorway, "White on white, Sammykins? Really? You look like my psycho cousin. And not the fun psycho next door. No, I mean the one whose parents actually _named after the devil._"

Dean ran his eyes over Gabriel, and his truly ridiculous costume. "Loki? Really?"

"God of mischief and totally the most badass character in the Avengers? He's just like me but not as sexy!"

"Uh-huh, shorty. You keep telling yourself that," Dean said skeptically.

"Pssh, you're one to talk, Dean-o. You're wearing _chaps._"

"The wild west will always be badass, midget."

Gabriel snorted derisively. "Yeah, yeah, John Wayne."

"Aren't you supposed to be in your bakery shelling out candy to little trick-or-treaters?" Dean asked.

"I'm making a brief pit-stop to check on you people and make sure you were suitably prepared for the greatness of my _favorite _candy-centric holiday."

"Yeah, we need to get the clinic set up for handing out candy, don't we?" Dean glanced at his brother. Sam nodded. Since their apartments all had interior doors they had decided to hand out candy street-side through Sam's clinic doors. All the people living upstairs had agreed to dress up for the event. And show up. Speaking of which, where was…?

"Anyone seen James?" Sam asked.

Dean shrugged, "Not since this morning."

"Me too, Samsquatch," Gabe offered without being asked.

Sam sighed, "I'll go get the wandering Novaks, you guys get set up."

Dean opened his mouth as if ready to suggest he be the one to go collect James and Claire, realized that would sound mildly ridiculous when Sam was already half-way out the door, and shut his jaw with a faint click. Shrugging and grumbling to himself, Dean grabbed a heavy bag of candy in each fist and hauled them out the door.

Gabriel snickered at the oddities of Winchester-flavored-humanity. Sam just rolled his eyes.

…

One knock on the door was enough to send it swinging inward. Apparently James hadn't bothered to lock or completely close the front door. Trying not to feel like a burglar, Sam slunk into the apartment, scanning the empty living room for signs of life. The room was cluttered as usual. Books perched on every surface, teetering in stacks, actively defying the laws of gravity and reality as they held their stacked poses. Notebooks, pens, pencils, and the occasional paintbrush peppered the furniture and occasionally the floor. Splashes of color stained the room in unexpected places, like a small, bright slash of yellow paint across the floor, or a stipe of cobalt blue curling around a door frame. It was a place that was very obviously someone's _home. _

Sam liked it. But what he didn't like was the fact that he was standing in the middle of his neighbor's living/dining/kinda-opens-off-into-the-kitchen room, with no neighbor in sight, very awkward and very uninvited. Sam moved forward, possibly to call for or look for James or Claire (his plan was somewhat less than perfectly clear), when something new caught his eye. An altar, like those used in Mexico for Day of the Dead celebrations. Huh, Claire must be doing some sort of project.

Not really knowing why, Sam knelt down and eyed the structure, gaze roving over the flowers and candles and finally catching on the photos. One of them caught and held his eyes. Two men, two _identical _me, goofing off in front of a fountain. Two men who both had James Novak's face.

"Dad's twin," a young female voice explained beside him. Sam nearly jumped out of his skin.

"What-?! Oh, hi Claire."

Claire grinned. She was planning on going trick-or-treating with a pack of friends and she looked the part. Her shirt was banded with gold and back horizontal stripes, her black cargo pants had gold sashes tied around the thighs and ankles. Gold, glittery eyeshadow swept her eyes up, making them seem larger, giving her a brand of mystery. Her lips were painted black and a pair of gauzy insect's wings drifted out from her shoulders. A small silver tiara peeked out from her blond hair.

"Hey Sam, I like the investment banker/devil thing you've got going on. Very current-events," Claire grinned, "Can you guess what I am?"

Sam furrowed his brow, taking in all elements of the costume. "Queen bee?" he hazarded a guess.

"You are correct, sir!" she pointed at him dramatically.

Sam grinned at her, but couldn't help but glance at the altar once more, at the family left behind.

Claire touched his arm gently, "He's not with us. Dad's twin. Try not to talk about it too much."

Sam gave her a gentle, reassuring (he hoped) smile. "Not one word, scout's honor."

"Secrets, how very amethyst of you, let's go, we'll be late if we keep letting Mr. Winchester be distracting," James chided the both of them as he swept through the room. He was dressed in his usual clothes. Trenchcoat and all.

Sam groaned, "You didn't dress up, did you? Dean's gonna be pissed. You're in troooouuuubbbbleee," he stretched out the last two words for emphasis.

James laughed and whipped out a fake ID, "FBI, drop it."

Sam snorted and Claire snickered. It was going to be an odd night.

…

A few hours later most of the trick-or-treaters had gone home and Claire had called to tell Castiel that she would be staying over at Krissy's house for the night. The adults sprawled into the chairs, propping their feet up and leaning on any available surface, munching candy.

Gabe gave a slow, lazy sort of grin, "Halloween…best candy holiday of the year!"

"What about Easter?" Sam yawned.

Gabe snorted, "I had a string of great-uncles who were all priests. Easter was rather…sermony."

"Valentine's Day?" Dean offered, despite the fact that his lip curled of its' own accord at the mention of the sappy holiday.

"You mean get drunk and feel lonely day?" Gabe sarcastically clarified.

"Or get drunk and get naked day…" Castiel mused.

"We do not speak of Valentine's of '05," Gabe shuddered.

"No one needed to see that much of Cousin Corey…ever." Castiel groaned.

"I wanted to burn my eyes out," Gabe intoned solemnly.

"And then he started _hugging _people." This warranted a full-body shudder.

"Oh god, the memories, the trauma is too much!" Gabriel squeaked.

All four of them laughed so hard the cried. Even Gabriel and Castiel, who, in their defense, could probably claim to be truly horrified at the memory of the 2005 Valentine's Day incident. Halloween was a good day. Pure and unscarred and unscorched. Perfect.

**Author's Note: Hi there, I'm really tired so sorry if this makes no sense or the last few paragraphs of the chapter don't make sense. I will fix them when I'm getting more than five hours of sleep a night. :p **

**Anywho, thanks for all those reviews, they made me insanely happy! **

**Please do continue to review if it's convenient for you, as you can tell, I LOVE reviews. **

**See ya next chapter!**


	9. Chapter 9

**Chapter 8: The Artist Formerly Known as Castiel**

Castiel was a creature of movement. His entire self seemed to burn with a barely contained force. A profound energy source that never ran dry. Castiel was always the sort of person who would rather crash and blaze out than slowly fade away into nothing. This used to manifest in odd ways when Claire was younger. She remembered dusky Friday nights when they would stay awake until midnight playing game after game of Sorry. Castiel would put her to bed and she would listen to him move and breathe and exist out there in the wilderness of the apartment after midnight. Claire would fall asleep soothed by the lullaby of Castiel's restless soul.

Some Saturday mornings Claire would be awakened by the sound of Castiel playing electric ukulele (badly, tone-deafness does not translate well into the musical arts). Somehow he always knew when she was well and truly up, because as soon as her feet hit the floor he would be sticking his head through her doorway, hair wild, trenchcoat thrown around his shoulders. "Get your clothes and grab some toast, we're going on an Adventure," he would tell her. And Claire would get dressed and grab some toast and they would be off to catch the bus to some new and strange destination.

Their day-trips were always 'Adventures' with Castiel. Adventures with a capitalized 'A'. Claire fancied that you could hear it in the way Castiel said the word, with just the right amount of pop on the vowel. Even if the day was spent doing nothing but taking the bus to Portland and playing hours of hide-and-seek in Powell's Books or visiting this odd landmark (yes, indeed, there was a world's largest ball of twine, Claire knew from personal experience) or that ancient forest, everything was new and different and _adventurous _because they made it that way.

Claire loved Castiel's restless soul and she loved their Adventures. When Gabriel first found out about their sporadic day-trips to odd places to do mundane things (or mundane places to do odd things, it always depended on Castiel's mood) and began tagging along, Claire was a little bit jealous. But Gabriel added a new dimension to their travels that hadn't been there before. He threw in the missing pinch of madcap dare-devilry. Claire and Castiel's Adventures soon expanded to be Claire, Castiel _and _Gabriel's Adventures.

Claire never forgot the first time she told Castiel that she couldn't do an Adventure today, she had too much homework. He didn't look wounded or hurt. There were no dramatics. What Claire saw in his clear blue eyes was infinitely worse. She saw nothing. For the first time in years Claire saw absolutely nothing when she searched his face for his reaction. Castiel had successfully shut her out and it _hurt. _After that he wished her good luck, told her to come to him if she needed any help, and asked her to please excuse him as he needed to open the store for the day if they were not going to be going anywhere.

That was when she was in seventh grade. The Adventures hadn't stopped after that, but they had changed. Their occasional spontaneous Saturday excursions became more scheduled. Their trips were fewer and farther between. And Claire missed them, missed them with the open-hearted sadness of a child who has just begun to realize that she is growing up.

That nostalgic longing for a sweeter, more Adventurous time must have called forth something in Castiel. Or perhaps he was just restless once more. Whatever the reason, now, on a clear November Friday, a couple of weeks after Halloween with Gabriel and the Winchesters, Claire awoke to the sound of the world's most intolerable electric ukulele playing.

"Get your clothes and grab some toast, we're going on an Adventure!" Castiel's voice rang out from the kitchen.

Claire half groaned, half laughed into her pillow. It was an in-service day at her school. Of course Castiel would do something weird. The reason for the in-service itself was weird to begin with. Apparently some of the kids in fourth hour biology made the mistake of releasing all of the rats they were supposed to only be observing (and most certainly _not _interacting with). The rodents may have been born and bred for captivity but they could run if they wanted to. A long story short, Claire's middle school was closed this fine November Friday for pest control.

The high school, well out of the range of the runaway rodents, was in session today. Claire glanced at her clock. Nine o'clock. Good, Dean would be at work and wouldn't have had to listen to the _enchanting _sound of Castiel's questionable ukulele playing filtering through the wall between their apartments.

Claire ran her fingers through her snarled mess of blonde hair. "Where are we going?" she yawned.

She could almost _hear _Castiel's smile floating toward her from the kitchen. "Wherever we want."

Claire grinned, standing up and wandering into the kitchen, "Does that mean it's my turn to pick?"

Castiel, fully dressed, smiled gently at her over the rim of his coffee mug. Steam wafted up from the thick, dark, sludge he drank. Claire stepped up to the counter, poured herself a mug and took a deep swig. She smirked at the burning after-taste. Dark, thick and strong enough to kill your average small mammal, Castiel's dreadful coffee was as much home to her as the apartment itself.

"What about a museum?" Claire suggested, "We haven't been someplace normal in a while."

Castiel cocked his head to the side, "Interesting. You don't typically choose 'lunacy in a less-than-exotic-locale'. You're more of a 'the-location-itself-is-lunacy' sort of girl."

Claire laughed. "It's an Adventure, anything can happen."

"That's my girl."

"Let me go grab some real clothes and we can grab Gabe and some muffins for the road."

Castiel nodded smoothly and took another deep draught of his foul coffee.

* * *

**Meanwhile…**

Dean Winchester hated field trips. He hated joint field trips even more. It wasn't bad enough that he was supervising a bus full of his Advanced History students, no, school tradition dictated that this particular field trip was taken every year with the Advanced Art students as a kind of Art-History lesson. So he was stuck in a yellow, metal, bus-shaped hellhole surrounded by high schoolers who all seemed dead set on getting themselves killed in a moving vehicle in the most creative (and/or stupid) ways possible.

"Remind me, what exactly am I getting out of agreeing to chaperone this _delightful _experience?" Sam snarked from the seat beside Dean.

"My undying brotherly loyalty?" Dean offered weakly.

Sam threw a bitch-face at him and worked on picking gum out of his hair. Where the flying gum had come from would remain a mystery for the rest of time, but Dean's money was on the scrawny kid in the back. The boy had aim where he lacked athleticism.

"It could be worse…" Dean offered.

Sam snorted and pulled a face when he finally managed to separate the gum from his auburn-brown locks. "Today is going to be a long day," he said resignedly.

Dean had no choice but to agree.

* * *

"Uncle Gabe, you're going to get us thrown out again," Claire reminded him.

"Pssh, I do what I want, bitches!"

Several old ladies shot him scandalized looks and a parent or two covered a young child's ears. Several people were shooting Castiel chastising glances. The sort of oh-so-casual looks that clearly said: '_control your children, we are judging you and all your life choices to date based on the last five seconds of that kid's behavior.' _Castiel looked right back at them and gave a helpless little half-shrug as if to say: '_they're not __**my **__kids. At least the short adult climbing that unfortunately famous statue is most definitely __**not **__mine.' _This, strangely enough, did not appear to be enough to silence or re-direct the negative attention.

"Take the picture…now!" Gabe cried from where he stood perched on the back of the marble horse in the museum's front entrance.

Castiel obediently raised the camera, circling the horse and snapping shots of Gabriel's antics from all angles before turning the camera lens on the shocked and appalled bystanders. Castiel took no small amount of joy in capturing their slack features, immortalizing their consternation in a collection of humming pixels.

"That will be all for now, ladies and gentlemen!" Gabriel declared from the horse's pedestal, having clambered down in the interim. The short man bowed extravagantly, golden brown hair flopping every which way. "We'll be here all day! But…catch us if you can!" and with that cheery challenge, Gabriel bolted.

Castiel sighed, "I worry about what kind of influence we are on you, young grasshopper," he said to Claire.

She shrugged, looking up at him, "Does this mean we're playing hide and seek?"

"It would appear so."

"Then catch me if you can!" and with that, she was off, gone the way of her 'uncle' Gabriel.

Castiel shook his head at his niece and cousin's behavior. "Why am _I _'it'?" he muttered.

* * *

"Ok, new game, every time he says 'government' and 'conspiracy' in the same sentence, we eat a skittle," Dean heard one of his students mutter to an art student as Mr. Deveroux, Orcastle High's art teacher, droned on.

"How is this _educational?_" Kevin Tran grumbled off to Dean's left, apparently perturbed that he wasn't getting the full instructional package.

"Shut up and absorb some culture," Mr. Deveroux's student teacher muttered at him.

Kevin continued to mumble under his breath, but none of it was distinguishable. Dean smiled fondly at the thought of the little nerd. He was just like Sammy at that age. Hell, he was just like Sammy _now. _

"I'm tired of parroting the institution," Mr. Deveroux had apparently grown bored with the whole 'educate them about art' shtick. "Someone else tell you buggers about the guest exhibit." He shuffled off, muttered about how he had wanted to teach _computer science, dammit_.

There was a moment of silence as everyone stared at everyone else and wondered what the hell happened. Mr. Deveroux huffed out an irritated grunt, "Well, we're not getting any younger, someone'd better tell us about this 'Castiel' guy."

More silence. Dean was actively considering stepping in and lecturing about something, _anything_, despite the fact that he really didn't know a freaking thing about the guest exhibit this month. Luckily, the student teacher, he still hadn't managed to learn her name, all he knew was she was a student at the local university, he hair was redder than any he had ever seen and she had greeted the art and history classes with a hearty 'live long and prosper, bitches!' (that last, profane part had gotten her a chastising glower from the bus driver, but she had just smile sheepishly and sat down), seemed to know what she was doing with this whole 'teaching art' thing.

"Ok, so the guest exhibit this month is pretty freaking cool, I've gotta say. I came down here on opening weekend just to see it. This is a traveling collection of art by 'Castiel' funded by his family. The style's surreal and pretty trippy sometimes. Lots of raw emotion and stuff… ok, I feel awkward lecturing at you guys. Time to ask questions I know the answers to just to see if you can answer them for me! Ok, so what do we know about 'Castiel'?"

Dean was tempted to tune out the Q and A, but knew that if he looked too zoned out, Sammy would bitch-face at him for not being a good example for his students. So, shooting a short glare at his little brother, Dean put on his best 'listening face' and tried not to get too bored.

"No one's sure if that's his real name," a student offered.

"Yeah," the student teacher encouraged.

The student, emboldened, continued, "Most people assume he just went by his first name, like Madonna or Prince or something. He was super private when he was alive."

The student teacher, Dean was fairly sure her name was Ms. Bradbury or something, nodded.

"His family was totally screwed up," someone else contributed to the class discussion, "Like, his dad disappeared, one brother was in prison and his mom was nuts."

"But no one knows any of that for sure," someone else hedged.

Someone snorted, "Yeah, and no one knows if he was bi or not, everyone still thinks it."

"Everyone? I've never heard of this guy until today…" someone interjected.

Before the group could collapse into total anarchy, the student teacher re-took charge. "A few more little facts for you guys before I let you loose in the gallery. One, 'Castiel' did all of the original cover art for the AngelFall books by Emmanuel Grace. And two, he had an identical twin. Yep, rumor has it that the two paintings everyone calls his 'self-portraits' are actually of his twin. Weird, right? Anyway, go forth and don't touch anything, munchkins!" the student teacher (Dean wondered if he could get away with asking her what her name is without sounding like a jerk who hadn't bothered to remember it) waved them all forward, allowing the students to spill into the gallery. Mr. Deveroux wandered off, muttering about security cameras and the government monitoring his actions. It would appear that the art class was officially abandoned to the tender care of the student teacher, Dean, and Sam.

They were all doomed.

* * *

Claire was surprised to find herself in a gallery full of her uncle's work. Fleeing from her 'seeking' family members (Castiel had found Gabriel easily and recruited him to search for Claire) she had opened the door to 'guest exhibit' and found herself tumbling into a painted realm full of color and _Castiel._ She didn't need to read the nameplates beside the paintings to know whose hand had applied these careful, loving, hating, living, _feeling _brushstrokes to dozens of canvases.

It was a decidedly mauve feeling. Like Alice dropping through the rabbit hole, Claire found herself in a world both strangely identical to hers and yet so completely different that she couldn't quite reconcile any part of it. She scanned the frames all around her. So this was Castiel before the fire.

Wow.

She hadn't realized…

She hadn't realized a lot of things.

One, the family had kept far more of his old paintings than she had thought they did.

Two, they were _here. _

Three…there was so much she didn't know.

Walking through that forest of painted panels, Claire wondered at the depth of imagination and emotion her usually stoic uncle had splashed across the tiny artificial worlds presented by the canvases. At the other end of the hall she could hear a woman lecturing what must be a high school class on the artist known only as 'Castiel'. Claire smiled at the rehashing off old familiar knowledge, struggled to recall the time she had spent in his old workshop in the city, and snickered at the comment about everyone thinking he was bi. _'It would explain all that ridiculously-expressive staring he and Dean have going on,' _the irreverent part of her cackled in the back of her mind. Although that train of thought dumped her off at the realization that Castiel hadn't actually had a single proper adult relationship since he took her in. Damn, he must be ten kinds of repressed. …And this train of thought was getting incredibly creepy and sad. Claire cut it off before she could feel awkward.

Instead she wandered around, stopping and staring at a few choice pieces. One of Castiel's famous 'self-portraits' hung on a wall, an ironically eye-catching placement for one of the few self-portraits of an incredibly private artist. Heavy in shading and odd lighting angles, most of his form was obscured by a shadow that almost seemed hungry as it rolled across the canvas. He stood with his back to the viewer, torso bare but mostly hidden by the play of light and darkness. Only one shoulder was clearly visible, a pale shoulder blade highlighted by an unseen light. A dark tattoo sprawled down the visible skin, outlining the constellation Gemini in pinpricks of black and blue.

The painted Castiel was glancing over the tattooed shoulder, face backlit and mostly dark, edged with a strange corona. One blue eye shone out though, and even as nothing more than oils on a canvas those eyes were clear and soul-searching. Cutting and incisive, full to the brim with a clever, leaping intellect that would tug his life hither and yon forever. People often told Claire that she had her father's eyes. She didn't think so. Her eyes were blue, true, but it was her secret hope that someday they would have half the clever wisdom lurking behind them as Castiel's.

It was a self-portrait that showed none of his features. Anyone could look at it and then not glance twice at the real Castiel as they passed him on the street. But Claire knew that the painting wasn't of features that could be catalogued and mentally earmarked like noses and teeth and cheekbones. It was of _Castiel. _One half of a Gemini and the wisest man Claire had ever known.

"Jimmy had one too," a gentle voice spoke beside her, quiet enough that only she would hear.

Claire glance up, unsurprised to see her uncle in this place. "A Gemini tattoo?"

Castiel nodded, "It was an indigo day when we got them. A good color for family."

Claire grinned up at him, "You always said I was born on an indigo day."

Castiel raised his eyebrows, "Did I? I'm so very sorry then; I've led you to believe that you're human all these years. Your extraterrestrial parents will be so very disappointed when they come to pick you up in the mothership."

"A pity, that," Claire smirked, glad for the change in mood.

Castiel ruffled her hair. "I lost Gabriel at the gift shop. Shall we go collect him and continue exploring?"

"You got it, boss," Claire chirped.

* * *

"They have a _salad bar. _A freaking _salad bar. _In a museum cafeteria. A SALAD BAR!"

"Gabriel, I believe we are more than aware of the salad bar's presence," his cousin reminded him, scanning the cafe.

Gabriel blinked at James, not comprehending how he could not be as appalled by this as he was. "A. Salad. Bar." He repeated dumbly.

"There there, there there," James, apparently not knowing how to cope with Gabriel's distress, had decided to just stand there and pat him awkwardly on the shoulder.

Gabriel was gathering his verbal ammunition, ready for an extremely detailed explanation of exactly how and why a salad bar was an abomination when a crouton suddenly collided with his forehead, pinged off his skull and bounced into his mouth. With a surprised crunch, Gabriel's teeth came down on the square of bread, turning it to garlic-flavored mush. Mmm…not quite a kitkat, but at least it got the crunchy carbohydrate bit right.

"Claire."

Gabriel honestly couldn't tell if James' tone was intended to chastise his child for her misbehavior or congratulate her on her aim.

"Yes, father dear?" Claire asked sweetly.

"Gabriel is not for target practice. He is fragile and easily undone by leafy green vegetables and their starchy compatriots."

"I'll take note," Claire grinned.

Gabriel decided he had had enough of not being part of the conversation and threw on a mock pout. "I take issue with all of those statements!"

Thwip, crunch. Another crouton popped off of Gabriel's forehead and into his mouth. This one was launched at close range by a grinning James.

"Not..._*crunch, crunch*…cool… *crunch, crunch*…bro," _Gabe grumped.

James popped a crouton into his own mouth. He chewed and swallowed, smiling a small, smirky smile as he did so. "Mmm, nutritious."

"I will kill you in your sleep with a twizzler, you just wait."

"I look forward to the new experience," James deadpanned. Ugh, this guy was no fun at all to threaten.

Gabe scanned the crowds at the cafeteria. Lots of people…hmm… "Hey, guys, wanna try a little social experiment?"

Claire and James shrugged. "Sure."

"Okay," Gabriel grinned wickedly, the cogs turning in his head already.

* * *

Sam Winchester was not sure what exactly what he was supposed to do when a random passerby handed him a crouton and whispered, eyes shifty and restless, "Pass it on", before bolting. So, against his better judgment, the doctor held onto it. Surely there had to be some _reason _a museum patron he had never seen before was handing him a random salad ingredient. Right…?

Then he realized that he wasn't the only one carrying around a salad topping. One of Dean's students was trading a grape tomato for a black olive in the corner. Another stranger shoved a ball of cheese into Mr. Deveroux's hands before bolting. Most of the hand-offs were more subtle, but a handful were so painfully obvious Sam was tempted to take the hander-offers aside and give them tips on how to improve their technique.

Still feeling more than a little flummoxed by the whole experience, Sam searched the room for Dean, hoping his brother had some sort of explanation for the salad-topping Secret Santa going on all around them. Dean was distracted helping a group of students organize a game of life-sized chess on the huge black and white tiles of the museum's central floor. And lecturing them about the merits of the attack and defense stratagems of famous generals. It was ironic, really, considering how charge-in-guns-blazing-instead-of-planning-first Dean was in his personal life, seeing him teaching about historical precedents for this tactic or that strategy was surprising and a bit bizarre. War history really was Dean's forte.

Click.

Sam whirled around just in time to catch sight of a camera flash going off nearby. Eyes widening in surprise, he realized, to his great consternation, that his and Dean's neighbors appeared have taken up residence in the museum entry hall.

Distantly he could hear Gabriel laughing uncontrollably as James' camera clicked away. Claire had an iPhone out and was busy videoing the room. Sam sighed and smiled ruefully. Why did anything still surprise him with these people?

Running a hand through his auburn mane (maybe Dean was right and he did need a haircut…), Sam approached the photo-happy trio. "Please don't tell me this is one of your…projects."

"_Social experiment, _Sammy-boy. Elementary school children do projects for the science fair. _We _do _social experiments_ for the good of society."

"And how exactly does society benefit from…saladtopia?"

"_Sammy-boy. _I would have thought you'd be happy, isn't this your fondest dream? A world ruled by salad?!"

"No comment at this time."

"No, no, no, you've entered the war-zone Sam-a-lam, there's no way you're not playing the game!"

Sam was about to say something, anything, to refute the absurdity of whatever the hell was going on around him, but James cut in.

"This is a social experiment on people's vulnerability to suggestion and co-dependent relationship with social norms. So far only a quarter of the people we gave salad toppings and instructions to have thrown away their 'gifts'. Approximately a third have simply stood around, hanging onto the items," he cast a critical eye in the direction of the crouton slowly dissolving in Sam's sweaty palm. Sam felt properly criticized. James continued, "A few outliers have eaten the produce, but in the end most have obeyed the command and have passed on their foodstuff. And the more who obey the directive, the more socially acceptable the directive becomes, therefore the more people obey it and the cycle continues."

"Humans, so charmingly stupid. Like sheep," Gabriel sighed indulgently. Sam felt mildly offended.

He was about to say something heinously unoriginal and yet strangely appropriate as a come-back such as: 'you do realize _you're _human, too?' when Claire interrupted.

"And they make great photos."

_Click. _

James showed his daughter the picture and she nodded approvingly. "Show it to Sam, Dad."

James obliged, extending the camera to Sam with a pleasant smile Sam found a little disconcerting. The photo displayed was at an odd angle that somehow managed to only exaggerate the absurdity of a grinning Charlie Bradbury (Sam actually remembered the young student teacher's name) trying to pass a dried apricot off to startled Dean. Sam snickered despite himself. Dean startled looked a bit like a squirrel. "Dean's going to be pissed."

James made a small noise that might have been a snort if he were anyone less than himself. "Charming. I look forward to it. The argument should be most intriguingly fushia experience."

Sam, perplexed, and unsure as to what the subtext to that was exactly, and not wanting to open that particular can of worms at this point, simply said, "Well, keep it clean, you two."

James blinked and tipped his head to the side. Great, now they were both perplexed. And Gabriel was laughing. And Claire had hijacked the camera to shoot for photos of them all looking confused.

Sam had the feeling that is 'school field trip chaperone' had a job description attached to it, none of this nonsense would be in it.

* * *

The next week new art appeared on the walls of 'Beehive Books' and 'Trick or Treat'. Bookshop and bakery customers alike were befuddled and amused by what Gabriel and James were calling 'visual commentaries on human nature and the chaos of the universe' and what Claire was calling 'vegetarians gone wild'. The photos from the museum visit were all shot at intriguing angles and full of strange close-ups and odd focusing tricks. They were, in a word, fascinating in both subject matter (salad secret santa always being interesting) and technique. The cousins sold fifteen the first day.

"J."

A page turned. Blue eyes ate up words with the voracious hunger of one who is never completely still, no matter what his body may appear to be doing.

"_J._"

Another page flipped.

"J, don't make me take your book again."

Dark eyebrows rose at the chapter's cliffhanger ending. Fingers lifted, ready to turn the page.

"J, I will spoil the ending. Queen Alethea die-."

"Dean, that is hardly playing fair."

"Neither is including me in your little 'salad project'."

J huffed out a sigh, bookmarking his page (he never, ever, under pain of death, dog-eared a page, Dean had received at least two lectures on the evils of doing such a thing to a book, even a cheapo paperback), and turned his full attention and the frighteningly blue eyes that went with it, on Dean. "Your expression was perfect; the collection would be incomplete without it."

"I want the picture off your walls. I look like a stoned squirrel."

"Would you like to make an offer on the art piece in question? I will warn you, though, Dr. Winchester has already placed a rather hefty bid on it."

J was tormenting him, Dean could tell. And enjoying it. It was there in that placid expression, a tiny spark of glee dancing in the very back of blue eyes.

"I will pay whatever you want, J. As long as it's not the Impala. Or my mix tapes. Or pie. Unless I can eat the pie too… "

"This is not extortion, Dean, try not to be so feldgrau. That shade of green does not suit you." There was a pause in which Dean may or may not have engaged in and subsequently lost a minor staring contest with the bookseller.

Finally he sighed, "Ok, J, ok. Whatever you want. Keep the damn photo and sell it to Sammy if it makes you so happy."

"Thank you, Dean." Dammit, he looked freaking _smug, _the little trench-coated bastard.

Dean sighed, ruffled J's hair, ignoring the small noise of protest this raised, and turned to leave. J's voice stopped him at the door. "You could always put the picture up in your classroom. I'm sure it would be a huge hit."

"Shut up," Dean would have snarled, if he wasn't too busy trying not to laugh.

"Squirrels are charming creatures, be kind to our woodland brethren and rejoice that you have inherited their delightful ability to look brain-dead when surprised."

Dean was well and truly laughing now. "J," he wheezed out.

"Yes, Dean?" how was he so in control of his voice?

"Don't ever change."

"I don't intend to."

"Good…but no more squirrel-ish pictures, got it?"

The next morning Dean discovered a photo of a squirrel taped to his door. Under it in red Sharpie was written: 'one of us, one of us.'

**Author's Note: I don't normally write about my personal life in author's notes, but this week has been pretty awful for me. I'm sorry if this chapter seems rougher than the others, it is a direct result of my crappy week. I had a good day today, though, so in a haze of optimism I thought I'd post this and see how you lot feel about my weird little chapter. So, what did you think? I tried to provide some background on Cas' life as a professional artist-writer pre-fire and throw in some ridiculous museum antics just for fun. I realize that most field trips are not this cool or this weird. I took some artistic license. A whole heaping handful of it. **

**Anywho, if you have time please leave a review for me, I had so much fun hearing from everyone last chapter. **

**See ya next chapter! **


	10. Chapter 10

**Chapter 9: It's a Pirate's Life for Us**

**Author's Note: Thank you everyone who wished me a better week, that means a lot to me. Thanks so much, guys!**

Orcastle Oregon was one of those relatively small, picturesque towns that sat proudly in what could easily be mistaken for the middle of nowhere by a casual observer or a lost city person. Orcastlians were absurdly proud of this bit of status. There were even t-shirts declaring the benefits of living in a place tourists required GPS to locate. Benny made the shirts as a joke for the staff at his restaurant. Originally they cost five bucks a piece. Now they could be purchased for a dignified sum of twenty-two dollars plus tax at the local gift shop.

However, beyond suddenly over-priced t-shirts, there was one drawback to being a town both picturesque and relatively out of the way. Film crews. It was as if no one really realized that people actually did _live _in the tiny slice of Oregon they were trying desperately to capture on camera. No, obviously the shooting of the latest soppy romcom or stuffy historical drama superseded all notions of propriety and general good manners. It was very annoying.

Now, it wasn't Orcastle's fault that it made such a good backdrop. Nor was it the residents' fault that they happened to live in the middle of said good backdrop. However, it most definitely _was _the damned film crews' faults for being offensive gits about the whole ordeal.

Normally it wasn't so horrid. The filmmakers would often be decent enough to politely email the residents of whatever block they needed on screen to let them know what was going on and what they needed to do. Frequently only public areas were used anyway so no one was too horridly inconvenienced. However, every now and then there was _that one producer _or _that one director _who was just so damn _nit-picky _about everything and so abrasively demanding about getting it that not only did their crew want to kill them, the entire town was contemplating mass murder.

It was really no surprise to Castiel, after surviving a 'they're filming in town square' fiasco or two, and subsequently having met several film producers, that his brother Zachariah was a film producer on the more obnoxious end of the spectrum. Castiel was fairly sure that slime ran in that Zach's veins instead of blood.

However, it _was _a surprise to Castiel when he awoke to someone banging on his door at four in the morning the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. Actually, if one was to be a stickler for details, the rude door-knocker was banging on the door to Sam's clinic. Loudly. Castiel could hear it. He supposed Sam and Dean could hear it too, seeing as their respective apartments shared the space above the clinic. And yet it was Castiel that actually bothered to do something.

Sticking his head out one of the front windows, he peered down at the man standing on the porch. Smirking wickedly Castiel shouted, "Hello, and welcome to Burger King. _The _Burger King speaking. How may _you _help _me _this fine morning?"

The man, he must be an intern of some sort, he didn't look older than eighteen, glanced up nervously. "Umm…hi, your majesty…?"

"Hello random citizen."

There was silence as Castiel waited for the kid to dredge up the nerve to say anything to him or at least confront him on the bizarre direction he had taken this conversation. Finally the intern cleared his throat and said in what must be his best attempt at gradiosity, "Hello, my name is Alfie Sammandriel and I am here on behalf of Z. Novak productions. We are pleased to inform you that this block will be closed off today and the four days afterward for the filming of the newest hit teen vampire film, _Midnight. _We are sure you understand the implications of the use of this section of street. All residents of this building must remove their cars from the vicinity and refrain from leaving their homes or disrupting the film shooting in any way. Thank you for your patience and enthusiasm for this new project. We at Z. Novak Productions are all very excited about it."

The kid had to have memorized that spiel from a script, there was no way other human beings actually talked like that… oh, wait. Z. Novak… The one person Castiel had ever known who actually would talk like that and ice every word with a healthy layer of condensation and general smugness.

Gritting his teeth, Castiel barked out one word, "ZACHARIAH!" before slamming his window shut. He marched across the living room, Claire groggily watching his progress, and ripped open the apartment's front door, only to reveal an irate Gabriel standing on his doormat.

"Why is your sleaze of a brother's fucking film crew kicking me out of _my fucking bakery?!" _Gabe's vocabulary tended to get more colorful the more sleep-deprived and/or angry he was.

Castiel opened his mouth, about to say something, anything, before his cousin cut him off again.

"Do you have any _idea _what day it is, Jamie? Huh? It's the _fucking day before Thanksgiving!_ I've been awake since two am baking and baking and baking for the last-minute shoppers. I make a _killing _the day before Thanksgiving. And right now, it's looking like the only thing with any chance of being killed is your asshat brother."

Castiel huffed out a sigh, the air buzzing against his lips like sullen bees. At a loss for what else to say, Castiel decided it was healthier to just agree with the furious midget. "I concur on the topic of my brother's general asshattery. It is appalling. He should really see a specialist for a condition like that."

Gabriel's mouth twitched at the dead-pan humor, like he was seriously resisting the urge to at least smirk. He managed to stay straight-faced long enough to snap, "Fix this, Jamie. Now," before turning on his heel and sweeping away with more dignity than Castiel thought he possessed.

Castiel ran a hand down his face and closed his door. He glanced at the clock. 4:17 am. He could sleep for a few more minutes before dealing with irritating family members. He threw a chastising glance at Claire, the sort that very clearly said 'I will turn a blind eye on the fact that you're up far too late/early so long as you get your butt back to bed in the next five seconds.' Claire raised a sleepy eyebrow at him but still trudged back to her room, closing the door behind her. Castiel eyed the apartment, gaze drifting over to his bedroom door and then back to the couch in front of him. Should he go back to his room and have to move paintings off of his bed or just crash on the couch…? Sleeping next to all those paintings had been very uncomfortable…and his thoughts were getting slow…and groggy…what a pearl-gray sort of feeling…

Castiel crumpled into the rough orange fabric of their ancient couch and curled up into a ball. He slept fitfully until 5:03. That was when the Winchesters each realized what exactly was happening in front of their building.

Dean didn't knock like a normal person. No, he just snatch Gabriel's key (the man needed to stop leaving it laying around, today it was stuck in the fake plant sitting in the hallway in front of the four apartments) and unlocked Castiel's door, wandering into the apartment, a sleepy Sam trailing after him. Dean did not go into battle against his sleep-deprived neighbor unarmed. No, the elder Winchester carried a set of portable ipod speakers and the perfect electronic device to go with them.

By 5:04 the apartment was filled with the harsh jangle of eighties rock. Claire stumbled out of her room, rubbing sleep from her eyes, muttering "What the hell, is that Asia…?"

Castiel, realizing that Dean was not going to stop the irritating noise, and that the longer he pretended to sleep the more determined Dean was to make the noise even louder, sat up on the couch. "What do you two want?" Castiel growled, glaring at the Winchester brothers over the back of the couch.

"I want Dean to TURN OFF THE DAMN MUSIC!" Sam snapped, hands over his ears as he tried to find a corner of the room free of blaring guitar riffs.

"This right here is _culture, _Sammy," Dean reminded him before turning back to Castiel, "And I want to be able to go to my freaking job. Some dicks won't let me leave the building, keep saying some crap about a movie shoot and how we're all stuck inside until they're done filming. Personally, I'm cool with skipping school, but I'm not so cool with getting my pay docked cuz I played hooky from my _job._"

Castiel, coffee-less, irate and sleep-deprived, couldn't muster any response more intelligent than: "Please go away," before flopping back down on the couch cushions.

"No, no sleeping, J," Dean flicked Castiel's ear, sending the other man bolting upright again.

"What do you aggravatingly orange people _want?!" _Castiel groaned.

"You're related to the producer, get them to stop filming or let us out of the building or _something," _Dean grumped.

"My brothers and I are not on speaking terms," Castiel grumbled right back.

Sam gave him a sympathetic look. Dean grimaced, and said, quieter, "Sorry, man."

Castiel shrugged, "Zachariah, the one with the film crew outside, is a pus-colored personality. He always has been. I suspect he always will be. It is unfortunate. He does not like me." _Or 'me' when I was 'alive', _Castiel added silently.

"I don't care if Zachariah is a polka-dotted poodle with a pathological fear of trenchcoated booksellers, make him go _away _or make him suffer," Gabriel grumbled from the doorframe. The Winchesters produced a vague growl of agreement.

Castiel stared blankly at the wall in front of him and counted slowly to twenty before turning back to the other occupants of the room. "Oh, how tangerine. You're all still here. Fine. I will do something about this nonsense. But first, coffee. Now."

And that was the last coherent sentence they dragged out of Castiel Novak until after his second cup of thick, dark liquid more similar in consistency to diesel than coffee as most knew it.

He eyed the other people in his kitchen, wondering why they were still here. All had refused his offer of coffee, some with more nauseated faces than others. After all, only some had managed to sample the delicious sludge his kitchen produced. At least Claire had gone back to bed after Castiel refused to provide her with her own caffeinated beverage.

He sighed, realizing that he would not be getting any time to himself this morning. "Negotiation is out. Zachariah thrives on it; he would prolong it as much as possible and get him way in the interim."

"Zachie's a bit of a dick," Gabriel clarified for the benefit of the non-family members of this discussion.

"…Yes…" Castiel slowly concurred, not sure what else he could have said, distracted by the glorious plan taking shape in the back of his mind, "But I have an idea for how to deal with him…"

* * *

Dean never did learn where the pirate flag came from. But it was there. At eight am sharp, the very instant the cameras began rolling for _Midnight_'s filming, it unfurled. With a soft, slithering whisper of canvas, gravity unfolded the black, white and red banner. As soon as the flag was completely exposed, hanging from the front window of James' apartment, smack in the middle of Zachariah's shot, a trilling whisper of sound tripped and tumbled out of Gabriel's bakery. The noise expanded, resolving into a simple, shrill tune. Dean could have sworn it was a pennywhistle. And that pirate flag was a perfect replica of Blackbeard's iconic flag. Skeleton, spear, hourglass and bleeding heart shone hot and bright in the November sun.

And then Gabe began singing and all hell broke loose.

* * *

All of Zachariah's filming was ruined that morning. No matter where he took the cameras around the apartment/shop building the flag, the singing, and the piercing pennywhistle followed him. As the day wore on the disruptions only got more outrageous. Sam managed to hook up the sound systems of his clinic, Gabe's bakery, and the bookstore to Dean's laptop where the history teacher was conveniently watching documentaries he was considering showing his classes. Documentaries about pirates. Complete with cannon noises and multi-actor voice-over narration.

Claire's performance on the pennywhistle was incredible and Gabriel's knowledge of old (incredibly dirty-minded) sea shanties terrifyingly impressive. When the performers grew tired, Sam designated the speakers in his clinic to play GarageBand recordings of their little show. The visual-audio assault to the senses, like any pirate attack, was relentless and cruel. A take-no-prisoners campaign, none were spared the indignity and aggravation of their antics.

Zachariah broke by noon.

* * *

Castiel answered the door in his bathrobe. He didn't need to wear the robe. He had on normal clothes beneath it. He could have answered the door fully dressed. Possibly even thrown a tie and jacket over the ensemble lurking beneath the bathrobe and made an appearance at one of the nicer restaurants in town. But no, Castiel answered the door dressed in an offensively purple, paint-splattered robe he had bought on clearance at Target for the sole purpose of wearing whenever he wanted people to go away.

It appeared to be working. Zacariah's smarmy smile never left his face, but all of his features spasmed at once in order to execute the muscular directive not to be nonplussed by one's odd younger brother. "James," the single word slithered across the elder Novak's lips, slipping out like a piece of gristle from an expensive steak. Mildly gross, incongruous, and extremely unwelcome.

Castiel tipped his head to the side and regarded his brother with furrowed brows. He remembered when they were children how that disquieted the smug bastard. Castiel and Jimmy used to be able to do it perfectly in sync. It was a beautiful thing.

The silence stretched onward and outward, filling the room like helium in a balloon. The fingers of Zachariah's left hand began to twitch and dance as his discomfort slowly but surely manifested itself. Zach had hoped that Castiel would have responded by now. A response would pass the conversational power back to the elder brother, allowing him to take charge. Castiel knew Zachariah, knew him very well, too well to allow himself to be conned as he had when they were children and it was all relatively harmless.

_"James," _ah, the teeth were grinding now. Castiel could hear the sweet crunch of molar crushing into molar.

Resisting the urge to smirk, knowing that would ruin the effect, Castiel slowly reached behind him, toward the table by the front door. There it was. His fingers danced across the box resting there, nails hooking under the cardboard lid, pulling the lid up and swinging it around until it was flush against his chest, facing outward.

Zachariah Novak blinked once, twice, thrice. His face turned a lovely shade of puce. His prematurely white hair seemed to stand on end.

As Zachariah's mouth worked swiftly, no sound managing to escape beyond the occasional whimper-whisper-squeak, Castiel clutched the cardboard lid even tighter. He slowly, inexorably, reached forward and pressed it into Zachariah's fluttering hands. Then, as his brother's fluttering fingers finally slowed down enough to take hold of the box lid, Castiel stepped back and softly closed the door.

With a sigh he turned and faced the room at large, scanning the assembled faces of Dean, Sam, Claire and Gabriel. "I'm going to need a new lid for 'Sorry'. I seem to have presented mine to Zachariah."

Gabe snorted, "More than he deserved."

Castiel blinked slowly, and then said, deadpan, "But my apology was so sincere."

Dean laughed, long and loud and grinned at Castiel, "Perfect. Just too perfect, man."

A sleek, smug smile slunk across Castiel's face. He bowed; a small little proper bow of the courtly sort no one really saw anymore. Then he rose and glided across the room to settle on the couch between Dean and Claire and continue watching documentaries over his friend's shoulder.

As soon as the film crew came off lunch the sound affects began again. The pirate flag still flew. No footage from that day was salvageable, and the incessant pennywhistle had managed to send two interns, one high strung makeup artist, and both the leading lady and male love interest into mild hysterics.

Thanksgiving morning the next day dawned perfect. Just nippy enough to be properly fall and just sunny enough to make the yellow leaves still clinging to branches glow gold. And there was no one banging on the door to Sam's clinic demanding their patience during the movie shoot from hell. Instead Castiel found a very arrogant note (on monogrammed stationary, with a _coat of arms_, how pompous _was _his brother?) taped to his door.

The note, once all of the unnecessary posturing and semantics taken out, was actually quite simple. It explained, in offensively polite terms, that Z. Novak Productions would be filming at their location at a later date and that someone from their office would inform them ahead of time in order to give the 'residents' ample opportunity to leave the area.

Castiel smirked quietly to himself as he handed the note off to Gabriel, Dean and Sam. The three of them laughed their heads off. Sighing softly, Castiel sent an ironic look up to the heavens. "Why, God, did those turquoise morons not bother to return the lid to my game of 'Sorry'?" This only incited more laughter. It was one of the few truly good mornings.

Of course there always has to be a mood-ruiner. It's the way life works. Because at that very moment, Gabriel's cellphone rang.

"Hello?"

Gabriel's face grew steadily paler and paler as he listened to the gabble of voices on the other end of the line. Finally, after a very short eternity, he hung up and turned to face his friends.

"My parents are in town for Thanksgiving. They're staying at Mary Winchester's bed and breakfast. I am so royally screwed."

**Author's Note: Aaaannnddd, it's a cliffhanger. Sorry (heh, get it, 'Sorry', I know, I'm not all that funny, but at least I've got the pun thing down) but this is a fun sort of cliffhanger! If any of you lovely readers remember, a few chapters ago I mentioned that Chuck and Becky were Gabe's parents, so there should be some lovely chaos there. I do apologize that there was a bit of a delay getting this chapter posted. Last week was extremely chaotic for me here in the real world, but things have calmed down and I should be back to updating regularly (for this story, anyways, I can't promise anything on my other fics…). **

**Just so you know, Orcastle, Oregon is NOT a real place. I made it up. It's modeled a little bit on the Bend/Redmond area at least in style but Orcastle is a fictional town. And **_**Midnight **_**is also NOT a real movie. I was just (kindly) spoofing on **_**Twilight **_**and how it's set in Washington State. (I say these things largely to make it clear that I am not infringing on any sort of copyright, ah, formalities...) **

**Blackbeard's pirate flag did look like the flag I described, though. Look it up, it's pretty gruesome/cool. **

**And I'm out of trivia, so with that thought, please do review if you have the time. **

**See ya next chapter! **


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